BLDGBLOG recently updated with an entry about photographer David Maisel’s forthcoming book Library of Dust. A collection of photographs of an Oregon state psychiatric institution.
“In 1913, Maisel explained, an Oregon state psychiatric institution began to cremate the remains of its unclaimed patients. Their ashes were then stored inside individual copper canisters and moved into a small room, where they were stacked onto pine shelves.”
I’m amazed and enthralled at the variety and beauty of the mineral deposits that have accrued on the exterior of the canisters. I can’t look at the photo above without seeing a reflection of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa
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To me it's interesting how the people who were unwanted left us something even the wanted people could never dream up. No one knew them in life but after... they are published. Sounds a lot like how several authors, artists and others left us.
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I have been thinking along the same lines. The photographs are beautiful and very interesting. Those who were lost in life are found in death.
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It's almost achingly poetic that the ashes of these people were put in brass canisters and shut away, making them anonymous and identical. Yet in some odd, chemical/alchemical process, each canister has "grown" so differently: almost as if they were individual personalities...
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