about my current personal work...

I have been fascinated by the history of rural America for years and specifically rather obsessed with the history of the former Traverse City State Hospital in Traverse City Michigan (also called The Northern Michigan Asylum until 1911.) This obsession lead to detailed research into the history of the facility as well as special permission to photograph inside. This body of work eventually evolved into a book published by Wayne State University Press in 2001 entitled Angels in the Architecture: A Photographic Elegy to an American Asylum. The book is available in paperback on this website or hardcover at Amazon.com.

 
Like so many of my fellow history aficionados, I have often wished I could "see" what history really looked like as it unfolded in the small towns and on the rural farms at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the years, my views of history have evolved from a romantic idealization into a sense of gratitude to be born in this era. History in my opinion should be reported warts and all to be accurate and truly educational.

So being the truthseeker that I am, over the last 10 years I have been creating photographs based on historic facts and stories. I use various film and digital technologies, models, vintage clothing and the exact location of historic events in the hopes of my photographs to be like those of the photographer who wasn't there...for example in 1910 to photograph the scene of a botched escape attempt at the local asylum. As facts indicate, an elderly man institutionalized for senility by his family died when his string of attached sheets broke and sent him to his death on the ground below. The detailed planning and preparation this man enlisted toward his escape seems to be lifted right out of fiction (and by no means the act of a senile individual). The image based upon this story is entitled The Escape Attempt (seen here) and was an intentional and carefully planned photograph made in 2004. note: I had access to the old asylum to make this image because my office/studio was located in a renovated area of this site. I researched the event carefully, found the ward (#13) where the escape attempt happened, then tied some Goodwill sheets together and created what I feel was the absolute closest view of what the actual event looked like some 100 years ago. This example, The Escape Attempt, is an good overall example of my 'new work' which should end up in my next book. 

More about the Traverse City State Hospital....

Without intending to do so back in 1997, and while primarily interested in the history of the people who survived this place, I became one of the loudest cheerleaders for the historic preservation of the bricks and mortar of the site. Thankfully, the site was purchased in 2001 by a redeveloper and is well on it's way to becoming a 'Walkable Community" which is exciting for many. However, with the buildings saved and out of danger, I will revert to the keen sense of respect I have for  the people who lived, worked, and died here from 1885 - 1989. Although the reason still escapes me, I feel a real responsibility to keep it's history alive. When visiting this site, it's historic power is palpable despite the noise and commotion of construction and habitation. The spiritual weight of the location can be easily understood when one learns that over 15,000 patients died (conservatively) there and hundreds of thousands of others passed through as patients, visitors, employees, etc. And unfortunately if the site had been anything other than a former psychiatric facility (with it's attached stigma) the buildings and grounds and all of the lives affected would have been already honored by the community of Traverse City, but I digress.