St. Mary's Hospital

The next (previous) 108 photos were taken in St. Mary's Hospital, the biggest one in Lisbon. This unbelievable grey ugly thing was built during a non democratic regime. In Portugal, fascism, Salazar, before 1974, Political police, censorship and "proudly alone" all mean the same thing. The infrastructures build during those terrifying years are still in use and worst then that: no one is planning to substitute them. The dimensions, proportions and the atmosphere are absolutely unacceptable. If you’re going to the hospital you’re not just ill, in Portugal that means that you are risking your life and your mental welfare.

This Hospital is more then fifty years old and in the main entrance one can read: Proudly serving Portugal's Education, Science and Health system for 50 years.

If fact I studied Medicine in this place during 2 years. You need A+ grade to go to medicine course in Portugal. You just can't have a B before you go to Uni. Once inside I learned nothing useful and I felt deeply depressed during all that time. I was supposed to go to one of the best Universities in the country and this is what they offered: bureaucracy, no pedagogic project, not even the intent to refresh the books or teachers that are the same since it all started. If you go to that uni you're suppose to know Fresh fluently, to be rich to buy everything they ask and be ready to memorise thousands of pages for each exam without asking why not even once. There is no practical stuff at least until your 3 or 4 year. You don’t know the science behind most of the things you do. You just do as you were told.

People accept all this shit and they don't even complain in their every day life because they are going to make a lot of money out of poor ill people. There are very few wonderful people and those know who they are. They act against the system for the first few years but even they become almost insensitive to the pain of the other. They become aesthetically indifferent. They die before they actually do.

I've been in elevators with dead people lots of times. I remember how uncomfortable the wooden chairs were, and we were supposed to stay there at least 4 or 5 hours a day. The labs are ridiculous. Hygiene is inexistent except for the room where surgery takes place (hopefully).

The images speak by themselves. They don’t even need title. I thought I needed to photograph an autopsy to express what I wanted about Portugal’s politicians, Portugal’s Health Care System, my emotional past in that place, the body’s death and its subsequent anatomical analysis. This is the worst Portugal has. A nest of poisonous snakes, spiders and beasts from the previous regime.

Let’s just hope fascism is in fact dead.