The Asylum Project – Empty Bed

Selected artwork for the book “The Best of Photography 2014”, included in the Black & White Collection at Musse du Louvre, Paris and presented at a private reception hosted at:

Musee du Louvre
75058 Paris – France
July 13th, 2015

Lier Psychiatric Hospital in Norway has a long history as an institution. The massive buildings house the memory of a grim chapter in Norwegian psychiatric history the authorities would rather forget. There is little available information about the former activities at Lier Hospital, but it is documented experiments that were carried out on this Norwegian mental hospital in the postwar period from 1945 to 1975. It’s about the use of LSD, electroshock, brain research funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and drug research sponsored by major pharmaceutical companies. It is perhaps not surprising that they try to forget this place and the events taking place here.

Lier Psychiatric Hospital was built in 1926 and had room for nearly 700 patients at the most. In 1986, many of the buildings were closed and abandoned and they still stand empty to this day. Some of the buildings are still in operation today for psychiatric patients.

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