I became intrigued by the Hudson River Psychiatric Center in the mid-1980s, when I was a student at Bard College. (The hospital was opened in 1868, just outside Poughkeepsie, New York; its grand buildings were designed by Messers, Vaux, Withers and Co., and the grounds by Frederick Law Olmstead.) When I first saw the hospital, all the original buildings were still open, but the patient population and staff had greatly decreased. By the time I moved back to the Hudson Valley in 2004, the older buildings were closed, and the remaining patients had been moved to a newer, smaller building on adjacent grounds.
In 2004, I began volunteering at the hospital, and taught photography to the patients. It was during this time that I befriended Stephen P. Burke, the property site manager, who introduced me to the original hospital buildings. From 2005 to 2007, I photographed the grounds and interiors of the hospital. The first time I went inside the main building, I was struck by the smell (mold, decay) and the sound (smoke detectors whose batteries were running out, creating a constant beep, sounding from all different directions). There was a feeling of haunting sadness—during its heyday, 6,000 patients entered their somber new reality through these doors. Then there was the chaos: desks on their sides, filing cabinets upended, office furniture scattered throughout the hallways and rooms. As I wandered through these spaces, I began to see the incredible patterns that the decay had left behind: the peeling plaster, the water damaged walls … And although I was aware of beauty in these patterns, I also saw something in the shadows—a flickering remembrance of the multitude who spent their lives here, sequestered, forgotten.
