books

claudio cricca
photography

This project examines the realities of the Italian Hospitals for the
Criminally Insane (formerly mental hospitals for the criminally insane).
These places are the terminus of society; here live people lost
between deliriums and hallucinations, each of them with
their own story of violence and humiliation.

Inside them, one experiences the dramatic reality of people abandoned
both by society and their families (the majority of the “inmates”
committed their crimes within the family unit and many
of these families do not want them under the same roof anymore).

In these institutions there is a prison regiment, but instead they
should be hospitals. The effect is a structure of a little asylum,
a little prison; a monster with two heads, without identity.

The inmates are almost unrecognizable, in the photographs
there are elaborated shapes with lights and shadows, bodies
and spaces, in an attempt to create images which conveyed
emotions as strong and incisive as possible, images which would
give an idea of the atmosphere inside the institutes, even without
showing the faces of the inmates.

For all these reasons, the project is entitled faceless.