The photo above, The Escape Attempt, is an example of my new work which combines actual historic events with my visual interpretation of them.

about the book Angels in the Architecture

I have been fascinated by the history of rural America for years and specifically with the history of the former Traverse City State Hospital in Traverse City Michigan (also called The Northern Michigan Asylum until 1911.) Based upon childhood memories of having an Aunt institutionalized there from the 1950's - 1970's to the belief that I was meant to tell this story lead me to embark upon a three year immersion into the early history of the facility as well as special permission to photograph inside the various structures (primarily Building 50) from 1997 -1998. This body of work evolved into a book which was published by Wayne State University Press in 2001 entitled Angels in the Architecture: A Photographic Elegy to an American Asylum. 

"Heidi Johnson has written a profoundly moving book--her images haunt like dreams.

She is both artist and historian, photographer and prose poet.

Her hard work here has rescued from darkness a part of history, a part of the soul"      

                                        -Doug Stanton, author of  New  York Times bestseller In Harm's Way

More about the Traverse City State Hospital....

In 1997, while primarily interested in the history of the people who lived, died and survived in this place, I became involved in an effort to save the bricks and mortar of the site. Thankfully many others joined the fight to save the architecture and in 2001 Angels in the Architecture was published and the site was purchased/saved by a redeveloper. The site 7 years later is now a multi-million dollar development of retail shops and condominiums. However, with the buildings saved and out of danger, I will again revert to the keen sense of respect I have for the people who lived, worked, and died here from 1885 - 1920 (I am particularly drawn to this period of time because it was pre industrial-revolution and this institution was thriving under full implementation of the Kirkbride Plan) And though the exact reason still escapes me, I feel a real and deep responsibility to keep this history alive...to tell the stories that other historians have sanitized, left out or otherwise ignored. When visiting this site, its historic power is still palpable despite the commotion of construction, commerce and habitation. The spiritual weight of the location can be easily understood when one learns that over 15,000 patients died 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 its attached stigma) the buildings and grounds and all of the lives affected would have been more appropriately honored by the community of Traverse City much like other communities have honored a Civil War battlefield or similar area that witnessed such a concentrated loss of life.