If you happened to be an inmate of the Oregon State Insane Asylum between 1883 and 1970s and nobody wanted your body, you were cremated and sealed inside a copper canister.
You sat on a shelf in your canister, numbered somewhere between 01 and 5118. Over time, your ashes reacted chemically with your canister, as the canister reacted chemically with the air. You were inside, trying to get out.
Then, in 2005, a photographer named David Maisel found you, took your portrait, and just published it in a book called Library of Dust.
that is the coolest fucking thing i’ve ever seen
aw, i was hoping mr. mudede would see this, as it seems quite up his alley, but i’m glad someone at the stranger appreciated it 🙂
Amazing…
Wow, copper must have been pretty cheap back in the day. These pics remind me of aerial photos of mine tailings, which are of course nasty pieces of work, but rather pleasing from high above.
you can still taste the crazy.
Sounds like a movie prop…
“North by Northwest” meets
“The Hellfighters” in Alaska,
with Beck doing a fuzzy soundtrack
pre-Modern Guilt
answering Elvis Costello with a Question….
“What ever happened to you before Martini met McMurphy doing Nurse Retched’s neckline?”
“LET”S SEE WHAT ELSE SARAH PALIN CAN TELL THOM YORK!!!!!!!!”
that table makes me so sad. i can just imagine how horribly people were treated.
I also assumed this was a Charles post, until I saw what was below, and realized my error.
@8: Me too.
BTW: This is the best thing I’ve seen on Slog in forever. Excepting Monica Bellucci’s rack.
My god. How beautiful and heartbreaking. And scientific, too.
I wish my roommate would fucking die.
What is it about mental hospitals that is so eerie? I live near Eastern State Hospital, and its late 19th century brick architecture runs a chill up my spine every time I drive up to it.
I’ve worked in the hospital, too, interpreting between English and Spanish for the crazy people, and it’s like entering a world time forgot. The staff is never in a hurry, the cliché that it’s hard to tell them from the patients is true, and there’s a tiny bowling alley in the basement of one of the many sprawling buildings.
One day I met the president of Iraq. He was doing water aerobics in the pool.
creepy, somehow horrific…could have been my fate had I been born earlier in time! shudder…
.. this is the loveliest post i’ve seen in sometime..and by the way. i didn’t recognise who you were til after you left..sorry about that.old age is a bish..
kisses to you and yours anyways..
Geoff Manaugh profiled Library of Dust on BLDGBLOG a few months ago, but nothing prepared me for actually looking through it at Elliot Bay a few weeks ago. Absolutely incredible.
Wow. Those are beautiful.
You find some of the neatest things.
that is a very visually beautiful epilogue to some very sad and painful lives. i want that kind of legacy. thank you.
Those are incredibly cool. Wonder if there’s prints…
I have always wanted to be creamated. Now I TOTALLY want to be put into a copper container!!!! That would be a cool looking way of going out!
It’s beautiful!
@11, ????
@19, they are prints, big lovely prints. He shows with Haines Gallery in San Francisco and Von Lintel in New York. The book turned out really well, it’s oversized and the plates are impeccably printed.