This book takes us into a world that usually remains locked off: the high-security ward 59A1 of the forensic psychiatric clinic in Zurich. This is where legally unaccountable offenders suffering from mental illness are treated—people excluded from society because of the danger they pose. In Wulf Rössler’s photographs of this place, we first encounter the cool, functional architecture, empty hallways and spartan rooms, until the physical presence of the patients—depicted anonymously—ultimately asserts itself. As a photographer and professor of psychiatry, Rössler offers a unique perspective on the subject and highlights the tension between the system and the individual. In addition to his striking photographs, the book features a collection of four essays that shed light on the topic of forensic psychiatry and society’s conflicted reaction. “The book invites reflection on ambivalences,” the artist says, “on the boundaries between security and humanity, on the complexities and moral responsibilities of working within forensic psychiatry, and on the question of how society engages with those who have fallen out of it and yet remain part of it.”

A CHANGED PERSPECTIVE
(excerpt from the conversation between Inka Schube and Wulf Rössler)

Inka Schube: I must say the photographs radiate an enormous sobriety and emptiness—one could generously call it “tidiness.” That surely has to do with the fact that the individuals in the images have to remain unidentifiable. Still, I’m struck by how little seems personal in this environment. Is that truly the case, or does that impression result from your photographic approach?

Wulf Rössler: Essentially two questions overlap here: the question of architecture—the outer shell—and the question of the people who move within it and whom I sought to photograph.

The building opened in 2007, widely considered as a successful combination of a new forensic clinic concept with park-like grounds and the older structures of the Rheinau Psychiatric Centre. The cantonal architect describes it in the construction documentation as “introverted in design,” with a security fence that blends discreetly into the exterior walls—a structure that deliberately avoids the typical language of correctional facilities. Three secure units are grouped around “cloister-like” courtyards, creating an “atmospheric environment of unprecedented quality.”

I approached this quadrangle slowly, from the outside in. First through the quiet parkland, then entering the building’s shell—registration, the voice over the intercom, the antechamber with its X-ray machine, the escort by a member of the nursing staff who guided me to ward 59A1 and accompanied me there each time. And beforehand, the instruction: no faces, no detail that could identify anyone.

I was greeted by a starkness I had not expected. The courtyard feels like an abstracted cloister, the exercise yard like an aviary. Inevitably one is reminded of 19th-century psychiatric architecture, in which the built environment was thought to exert an ordering influence on the confused senses.

In the common rooms, tables and chairs are bolted to the floor. Meals are served in plastic dishes. The cutlery numbered so nothing is lost, nothing repurposed. That people inhabit this space is indicated only by a newspaper or a tray of used coffee cups.

Over everything hover small black hemispheres in the ceilings, the eyes of omnipresent surveillance. Not a place for comfort. How, in such an environment, does one build trust, forge a relationship? And yet architecture is only the stage. The real stories belong to the patients.

Inka Schube: In many of your photographs the architecture is the main protagonist.

Wulf Rössler: Somewhat to my surprise, the patients never complained about the building, never about the strict arrangement of their world. What disturbed me seemed to matter less to them. Perhaps because so many of them have turned their thoughts inward, where monitored rooms and security fences hold little weight. Their inner world is louder than any external severity. Many have reached the end of a long and difficult course of illness; their social decline culminates in the clinic’s clothing depot.

And still, almost all of them carry hope—that things will, somehow, one day turn out well. Their path is arduous—a tightly structured daily routine, medication, therapy, relapses. And unlike prison, their stay is indefinite: a suspended state that ends only when a board judges them no longer dangerous.