Salve Mater was a former psychiatric hospital comprising several buildings. Part of it was already being renovated during my visit, while other parts still stood empty. The photographs belong to that transition, rather than to the complex’s present use.
The institution was originally run by a religious community and later became part of a university hospital. Its role in healthcare was still clearly recognisable in the abandoned rooms.
What struck me most was the careless clearance. Patient records and other materials that did not belong in an unattended building were still lying around. I made any information legible in my photographs unreadable. An old file is no prop, even after the institution has left.
A bed or examination table left behind immediately catches the eye. The tall windows and the patterns of their shadows also tell us something about the rooms themselves. Not every room looks like a treatment room. That variation is part of a complex where care, living and administration existed side by side. Individual objects cannot reliably reconstruct a treatment; that is not what these photographs are intended to do.
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