Freedom Within the Walls: A Shoot at The Knast
I have long wanted to shoot somewhere uncomfortable. A BDSM studio is built around comfort (unless your Domina has other plans for you…): the cross is there for balance, the bench is there for support, the sofa is there for softness. So when I found myself at The Knast for a kinky stand-up night by my colleague L'adios, laughing in a building that once held women behind locked doors, I knew I had found my place. After all, good pain is not about suffering. It is about pleasure. And a former prison, of all places, reminds us what a gift life is: a good joke, a good meal or a cocktail in the right company.
I wanted the raw force of it. The simplicity of bare comfort: a small cell with a bed, a table, and, for the lucky ones, a chair, with the toilet and shower somewhere down the corridor. We sleep, we eat, we read and write, we answer the body's calls, and we begin again, waiting for time to pass.
A friend of mine once told me that while he was in prison, he decided to enjoy life as much as he possibly could. So he did. That decision never left him, and today he is one of the happiest people I know. It is a bit like the secret of impact play. If you feel sorry for yourself, it will never work. But if you find the pleasure in what you receive, and learn to guide your experience so it feels good, you fly high like a kite. The pleasure lives in the freedom we find within limits we cannot control.
But The Knast is not "just another former prison." Built around 1903 and in use until 2010, this building held more than a century of hopes, mistakes and new beginnings. After a careful restoration that earned it a heritage conservation award, it opened to the public in 2024 as a restaurant and bar, and now a hotel as well. There is a quiet irony in that. Today it serves, with comfort and care, the very needs that were once the whole world of hundreds of women: a bed, a table, a meal, a bathroom of one's own. That contrast has settled into the walls.
So when I was granted permission to shoot here, I was thrilled in the comfort of my chair. But on the day of the shooting, when I walked in, I was shy, even a little ashamed that I could leave whenever I wished, unlike the women who came before me. The photographs on the walls remembered a time when this silence was heavy, echoing the unfullfilled lifes, desires and fantasies of women who spent part of their life here.
Janina kindly let us into the Böses Mädchen Zelle for shooting, a historically preserved cell for, well, mean girls. In that small basic cell the silence slowly changed its weight. It was no longer the silence of waiting, but the silence of the small, basic and cold cell in contrast with the tortorously bright blue sky through that small window.
If you ever find yourself there at an event, fully open to the public, order the cocktail. Sit in the corridor where women once counted the days, and taste your freedom. It is sweeter than you think.
CREDITS:
Photographer: Amelie (@amelieshoots_love)
Behind-the-scenes photos by Master Samael
Location: www.theknast.de