Andy Schwetz Length of stay: 9 months
The artist story
I look through the window at the clinic's courtyard. I watch the other patients. But actually I see nothing. I see nothing, I feel nothing. There is emptiness and numbness inside me. The only thing I feel from time to time is the longing for what I have lost and the self-hatred in me that I could not protect my little angel. I am a good-for-nothing.
I take the camera that Flo borrowed me and take a walk through the old cemetery of the psychiatric ward. I have to do something. I go to an old building and look through the viewfinder. I take a picture. Then another and another. This is fun. There is melancholy in me but also joy. I can see the world here the way I want to.
The emptiness around me remains, but the emptiness in me filled with colors, shapes and creativity. photography became my anchor in a world in which I was just drifting around.
Thank you photography for saving my life.
