Interview with Christof Nüssli
The artist’s book Withheld Due To: is a collection of photographs from the torture perpetrated in Abu Ghraib and the war against terror. The images were kept classified by the US government for years and only released to the public in excerpted form in February 2016, after years of effort on the part of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The disturbing photographs of body details, measurements, and administrative numbers are partially blacked out and at first glance do not show any effects of violence. Christof Nüssli’s full publication of these some 200 individual images plus source material as well as the folding, cropping, and montage of the documents in halves makes obvious the specific grammar and intersections of the images. His approach enables new ways of reading and looking at the photographs and raises questions about censorship and to what extent torture and violence can be represented. At the centre of the loose-bound book, the viewer finds an extensive list of questions, which if used to accompany the further study of the materials, continuously gives rise to new emotions.
SITUATION #65: Fotomuseum Winterthur
