Christof Nüssli

Withheld due to: is in the words of its author an uncomfortable book. It focuses on one of the most mediatized human rights violations of the 21st century: the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in the years 2003–2004. When the first images of Iraqi prisoners tortured by US soldiers started circulating in the media, the world was shocked. While these images are now imprinted in the collective memory of the second Gulf War, the vast majority of photographic archives remain classified to this day. Christof Nüssli presents the 198 photos, that were finally released by the US government in 2016, in a raw form: a loose stack of separate images that were folded in the middle. In contrast to the images that were first published, these images do not show any obvious cruelties, but are no less oppressive. Their bureaucratic character reduces the acts of violence committed to administrative processes and inevitably raises the question of what can be seen in the 1’802 photographs that have not yet been published. Danaé Panchaud