SOME KIND OF FREEDOM: II Defining freedom

The body as an objective of punishment and popular abuse for the condemned was a thing of the past when Gabriel de Mably suggested in 1789 that the purpose of punishment should be to discipline the soul rather than to scourge the body. But if punishment is consummated in prison, the absolute representation of deprivation of liberty it can only be applied to the body, as Mably seems to forget that the soul, being incorporeal, will always be free. The following series of photographs shows a common place for all inmates. This skylight is the compulsory passageway to their cells. Like a great zenithal eye it will watch them pass through twice a day for the rest of the days of their confinement: after lunch for the count; after dinner for the count again, and the confinement. At that very moment when they most feel the absence of freedom, stopping in this point of passage gives the location the quality of place and, at the same time, makes it sacred, immortalising in each photograph — under a natural light, and with a certain theatrical connotation — what each one of them thinks, dreams, feels, desires or what they have dreaming on, thus materialising the expression of the soul. Som