P.I.

While the six towers of the Penitentiary Institution Over-Amstel (known locally as the Bijlmerbajes) form an important landmark in the urban landscape of Amsterdam, the interior of these buildings are for most people unknown territory. However, Nico Bick was granted access into this prison, the most well known in the in the Netherlands. From 2006 until 2009 he meticulously photographed cells of prisoners, isolation cells, communal rooms, control rooms, etc., but also the concrete perimeter wall that circumferences the entire complex. We can view this work therefore as an inventory, an investigation of spatial diversity, a dissection of functionality and a typology of confinement.