Paris-based photographer Michael von Graffenried, who now lives in Paris, came back to Switzerland during eighteen months to immerse himself into different drug-related environments. He photographed students swallowing ecstasy or smoking hasch at parties in Zurich and elsewhere. Most importantly, he wanted to show the everyday life life of drug-addicts, and spent months in the steps of Peter and Astrid, a couple of hard drugs (cocaine, heroin) consumers in Bern, the capital city of Switzerland.

The result, panoramic, black and white pictures are a realistic and sometimes moving account of their life and struggles, between jail, dealing, prostitution and love. The pictures give a human face to those considered outsiders by society and generaly referred to in statistics, in an insight that is mostly uncompromising, sometimes compassionate, but always truthful.

The thirty panoramic pictures form the exhibition which were displayed on public billboards in the streets of the main cities of Switzerland (Zurich, Basel, Bern, Lausanne, Geneva and Lugano) at the beginning of the year. The usual ads for consumer products were, for once, replaced by photographs of drug consuming people. These panoramic images will now be shown together for the first time in the famous Swiss needlepark, the Platzspitz in Zurich. This open air drug scene made international headlines, tarnishing the image of a spotless Switzerland, in the 1980s before being closed down in 1992.