Inside the Haunting World of 19th-Century Mental Hospitals

One of the 19th-century’s most notorious socioarchitectural phenomena were the “insane asylums” that housed the era’s mentally ill — enormous and stunning buildings whose architecture stood in stark contrast with the ominous athmosphere of their inner workings. Fascinated by this phenomenon and its ghosts, photographer Christopher Payne set out to document the afterlife of those baleful buildings in Asylum: Inside The Closed World Of State Mental Hospitals — a compendium of images that peel away at a lost world and, in the process, offer a provocative portrait of the history of our (mis)treatment of the mentally ill..

Image courtesy of Christopher Payne via NPR

Image courtesy of Christopher Payne via NPR

Autopsy theater, St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, DC
Image courtesy of Christopher Payne via NPR

When I was a very young Nag I worked in psychiatric hospitals. They were bleak places and these photos make me very sad indeed.

Via Brain Pickings