Description: This is a bizarre and incredibly rare art photography book; a monograph of a victorian insane asylum (Oregon State Hospital) and its patients canisters catalogued remains. This is Dave Maisel's creepy, yet intriguing "Library of Dust." The photos are pristine within, while the cover has scratches and wear. The photos within are able to be removed and framed. There is information I. The book as well regarding the topic. The book is huge, almost 2 feet tall and a foot and a quarter wide; a little over an inch thick. "Library of Dustdepicts individual copper canisters, each containing the cremated remains of patient from a state-run psychiatric hospital. The patients died at the hospital between 1883 (the year the facility opened, when it was called the Oregon State Insane Asylum) and the 1970s; their bodies have remained unclaimed by their families. The approximately 3,500 copper canisters have a handmade quality; they are at turns burnished or dull; corrosion blooms wildly from the leaden seams and across the surfaces of many of the cans. Numbers are stamped into each lid; the lowest number is 01, and the highest is 5,118. The vestiges of paper labels with the names of the dead, the etching of the copper, and the intensely hued colors of the blooming minerals combine to individuate the canisters. These deformations sometimes evoke the celestial the northern lights, the moons of some alien planet, or constellations in the night sky. Sublimely beautiful, yet disquieting, the enigmatic photographs inLibrary of Dustare meditations on issues of matter and spirit. Among my concerns withLibrary of Dustare the crises of representation that derive from attempts to index or archive the evidence of trauma; the uncanny ability of objects to portray such trauma; and the revelatory possibilities inherent in images of such traumatic disturbances. While there are certainly physical and chemical explanations for the ways these canisters have transformed over time,the canisters also encourage us to consider what happens to our own bodies when we die, and to the souls that occupy them."
Price: 300 USD
Location: Wichita, Kansas
End Time: 2024-09-20T19:11:44.000Z
Shipping Cost: 11.38 USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Topic: Photography
Subject: Art & Photography
