July 2023
Many photographers love making images of buildings in decay and ruin. I confess to being one, as evidenced by the gallery on this site entitled “Forgotten and Abandoned.” Decay depicts the passage of time, and can evoke both memory and feelings of wonder. Photographs are moments in time, images of that which is fleeting, although those of us who make photographic images would like our images to endure.

I recently had the opportunity to make images of ruins located on the campus of the “The Village,” a renovated and re-purposed space in Traverse City, Michigan that was once the site of a progressive mental health asylum. You can visit The Village website and learn about this fascinating historical site at https://www.thevillagetc.com/history/

As I am preparing this (in August, 2023), I am also looking forward to returning to this site and making new images in the next few days. I hope to add more to this gallery in the near future and hope you like what you see.

SEPTEMBER 2023 UPDATE
I had the opportunity to continue exploring the asylum ruins at The Village in Traverse City, Michigan in August and created a number of additional images I am including in this gallery.

For me, the photographs I created are depictions of a metaphor for the mental health of the patients who were once hospitalized in these buildings. A person can be trapped in a mind that is sick and tortured, and also be locked inside a building from which there is little hope of "escape." The mind can fall into the wreckage of mental illness just as a building can fall into ruin. These are the thoughts that drew me in and on which I meditated as I made these images. While the state mental hospital was considered progressive at its time, I could not help but think of the patients as "inmates" imprisoned by the locked doors and windows, as well as by the mental illnesses from which they suffered.