Hey Suzan!

Welcome back from India! Can't wait to see photos from your trip. So here's yet another post about architectural photography! I came across Christopher Payne's website via the Swiss Miss blog - and am especially intrigued by his "Asylum" series, where he traveled across America over a period of 6 years documenting abandoned mental hospitals. Sounds like it would be a scary, disturbing and ugly body of work – but instead, his photographs bring to light the fact that many of these places were once majestic buildings built by famous architects, born out of noble intentions, and often had actually functioned as self-sustaining communities capable of producing  everything on-site, such as food, power, water and clothes. Ok, so I'm sure tons of awful scary stuff did happen in those places, but in a way that makes these once-grandiose environments even more fascinating! Not to mention that on a purely visual level, the decay is gorgeous...

PS. Check out the Eames chairs in the autopsy theatre. Doing the grotesque in style... nice!!