Printing

On Thursday Peggy came over to help me edit for the Exploratorium exhibit.  We had a very productive day and nailed down our final choices.  I started printing yesterday morning and have worked pretty steadily until a few minutes ago.  I still have some that I will probably reprint tomorrow, but for all intents and purposes I am done for now.  All my prints are 12 inches wide, and my great friend Alex Ross has been printing the seven or eight 36 inch wide prints.  It feels great to be so close to putting everything into a giant fedex box and sending them to San Francisco.

Suitcases

On Monday I shot the last of the Willard suitcases for a while.  I hope to use the rest of this month to begin editing the images for the Exploratorium exhibit, and knowing how my brain works I knew I couldn’t attempt to edit while I was still shooting.  I was surprisingly emotional about the whole thing; an important part of the project ended and I am not sure when it might resume.  It is also significant to me that it marks the end of the Kickstarter phase of this work.  So some thank you’s are in order.  I could NEVER have gotten this far without Kickstarter and the incredible support of the almost 700 people who backed me. Thanks to Alex Ross for the long term “loan” of his lights and soft boxes.  He is a true friend.  Craig Williams and the New York State Museum gave me access to the cases and Craig’s support was instrumental in keeping it all moving along.  And Peggy Ross kept me organized.  Without her help in unwrapping, setting up the shots, helping me see things I would have missed, and putting the objects back where they belong I would never have made it through as many of the cases as I did.

I will work on a post later today showing the last case in the queue, as it were.  It was a great one to end on.

Willard Suitcase #13

I have been spending a lot of time in Albany photographing the cases.  I have been a bit overwhelmed lately and have had a hard time deciding what to post as an update.  There is so much material and most of it is fascinating.  I have been averaging at least one shoot a week, and it still feels that I have a long way to go.

Just as a case this one is nice.  Very well made and quite stylish.

It belonged to Steffan K. (although his first name was spelled differently on some items.  On one envelope from a druggest it was written as Steve.)

I especially appreciated the way that the staff wrapped and preserved the items.

My interest in the wrappings and the bows has actually increased.  The three women that did most of the work each had a different style.  Sarah Jastremsky, Christine Allen, and Karen Chambers worked for months going through the cases cataloguing and then stabilizing each item.  At some point I’ll get try to get together with them and find out who did what.

These items seem so personal to me.  The calendar was from 1929.

I never intend to fetishize the items in the cases, but this clock just blew me away.

It is a very early example of a Westclox Big Ben.  Steffan clearly brought it with him when he arrived at Willard, and my guess is that it never left the box.  Both the box and the clock are in perfect condition.  It just made me sad to think that it was packed to go to along with him and he might have never used it there.

As I spend more time with the suitcases and talk to people who worked at Willard, I am becoming quite convinced that the reason the cases were never thrown away is due to the fact that the employees developed close and lasting relationships to the patients.  When they were discharged or died, the personal connection was so strong that it made it impossible to just toss them out.  Anyway, that’s just my theory, and I know the whole issue of how the state chose to treat the mentally ill is a complicated one.

Thanks as usual to The New York State Museum, and especially Craig Williams for allowing me access to the cases and facilitating this project.  And to Peggy Ross for her great help with the process of shooting and re-wrapping each case.

Willard Suitcase #5

This suitcase belonged to Mary W.

Hers was the second wicker case I photographed last Thursday.

As I have mentioned before, I haven’t any idea what I will find when I unwrap the cases.  This one felt a bit heavier than others and when I opened it, it was mostly filled with fabric and lace that I am assuming Mary had made.

There was a lovely feel about the material as I unwrapped each piece.

A mark similar to the one above was on several of the towels.  At first I thought it was a date, but I am not so sure.

I believe these tags are from Willard and not the museum.  It looks like her case was entered into the system in the 1960s.

The detail on the lace pieces is beautiful.

Lots of interesting shapes and sizes.

Thursday was very productive.  Mary had only the one case with the lace and towels, but I also shot 3 cases that belonged to another person.  I’ll edit those photos and get them up soon.  Many thanks to Peggy Ross who helped me rewrap the cases, and as usual to Craig Williams for all his support.  If you are seeing these for the first time, please check out my project on Kickstarter.

Peter

I have really wanted to see Peter lately, so yesterday I drove out to Albany.  He had class until 3.00, so on the way to Schenectady, I stopped in to visit my friend Peggy Ross.  Had a great lunch with her and then Peter and I drove into Albany to have a meal at the Pump Station.  For a thin guy, he can really put away the eats.