Leros (Signed First Edition)

MAJOLI, Alex and Laura Facchi, Maurizio Costantino, Franco Rotelli, Agostino Pirella, and Mario Tommasini

ISBN 10: 0954207920 / ISBN 13: 9780954207922

Editore: Trolley, London, 2002

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First edition. Oblong hardcover. Features texts by Laura Facchi, Maurizio Costantino, Franco Rotelli, Agostino Pirella, and Mario Tommasini. A powerful debut collection of black and white photographs Majoli took over the course of five trips between January 1994 through March 1995 to a psychiatric hospital on the Greek island of Leros. Includes 47 duotone illustrations. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. Signed by Majoli and Facchi. A powerful book that documents some of the horrors that went on at this little known Greek island. Codice articolo 177240

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Leros (Signed First Edition)

Casa editrice: Trolley, London

Data di pubblicazione: 2002

Legatura: Rilegato

Condizione sovraccoperta: sovraccoperta

autografato: Autografato dall'autore

Edizione: prima edizione

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

The Greek island of Leros was for 20 years and more the site of the world's most notorious and brutal asylum for the insane. Alex Majoli has chronicled its inmates and their return to a sane world and integration into island society. Thirty years ago, in the balmy Aegean blue, the island of Leros was commandeered for a social experiment that was to become a secret so terrible as to rival that of the Nazi death camps or the Stalinist gulags. When the Greek psychiatric medical establishment reached the end of their perfunctorily useful treatment of their patients they sent them to Leros, and the asylum set up in the former political prison there. The staff were not doctors or nurses and had no medical training, other than herding goats. They were local islanders, and were used as guards, or filaks. The guards quickly degenerated into thugs, who sought to control the madmen with the only methods available to them - brute force and terror. The inmates were systematically beaten, even tortured, and crushed of whatever sensibilities they once had. They became animals, who defecated where they stood or crawled, who fought and killed themselves or each other, according to their needs, in a veritable Golgotha of despair, filth and violence. No human traits were recognisable among the inmates: even speech had become redundant. In 1990 a team of Italian psychiatrists from Trieste, aided by volunteer care workers, managed to break down the walls of this madhouse. What they found shocked even them, as did the blank indifference of the guards. How else should they behave in a world deprived of reason?

L'autore:

Alex Majoli, born 1971 in Ravenna, Italy, joined the f45 studio in his native city, working alongside Daniele Casadio when 15 years old. He has been a member of the photographic agency Magnum since 2001. He lives and works in Milan and New York. His first book was Leros (Trolley, 2003).