Asylum Suitcases, Found And Photographed - From NPR

"Photographer Jon Crispin has a fascination with things that are left behind. In the '80s he was basically given free rein to document abandoned asylums in New York state. Crispin's latest fascination is with old suitcases — discovered by the New York State Museum in an attic of the Willard Psychiatric Center in Willard, N.Y."

"The cases were put into storage when their owners were admitted to Willard sometime between 1910 and the 1960s," Crispin explains on a Kickstarter page, where he is raising funds to continue photographing. "And since the facility was set up to help people with chronic mental illness, these folks never left."

"I try to make them look as beautiful as they are," he says. "And they're touching too. My goal as a photographer is to have people react." The suitcases contain letters that were never mailed, diaphanous cigarette papers, a glass bottle of glycerin left behind by a craftswoman — tiny parts of a forgotten whole."

See more photos here (Link)

Point of View

Anyone who has ever been around an infant or toddler knows how they study and take in the smallest things. They are interested in how everything tastes, feels, sounds, and looks. As you get older, I think you get a little jaded to the amount you take in during the course of the day.

Kids have the luxury of investigating every new sight, sound, taste, and texture - they don't have to tune out extraneous sensory input to accomplish a goal - they don't ignore the caffeine jitters, 24 hour news, loud music, or the smells and sounds of dense traffic. The obstacle is the path.

I started taking these photos one Sunday afternoon just to get an appreciation of what things must look like from my son's perspective - what does he see when we sit him on our laps at the table, or when he holds on to the dishwasher rack and tries to pull out all of the spoons, or when he's sitting in his swing looking at the birdhouse? What does he see when we put him in his child seat that faces the back window? I set up a tripod to his height, attached a 50mm lens and got a view of thing he sees or plays with on a daily basis.

The Pen is Mightier

"I'm the same as I was when I was six years old..."

Vivian Maier was a nanny who lived in Chicago for most of her life and passed away in 2009 at the age of 83. Little more is known about her, except that she was an avid street photographer. Her work was discovered at an auction in 2007, more than 100,000 negatives and undeveloped rolls of film, sold by a storage facility who were cleaning out her locker for delinquent rent.



Click here for links to more of her work.


"On a plane, I can see all the lights below, and oh my god they they look so alone. I don't really feel anything."