
Angels in the Architecture
A Photographic Elegy to an American Asylum
Heidi Johnson(Author)
Wayne State University Press
Will be published approx. on 28. February 2004
Book
Paperback/Softback
212 pages
978-0-8143-3212-2 (ISBN)
Description
In the nineteenth century, perhaps no approach to mental illness was more compassionate than that of hospital administrator Thomas Story Kirkbride, whose asylum designs integrated beauty and nature as a method to treat patients. The Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City, Michigan, was one of the last of nearly tow hundred such architecturally intriguing asylums. Founded in 1885 under the principle ""beauty is therapy,"" the Northern Michigan Asylum closed in 1989 and today stands as a haunting reminder of this lost era. Angels in the Architecture is a photographic study of this institution's one-hundred-year history. Heidi Johnson's photographs of the building today are juxtaposed with rare images from private collections and state archives. Johnson has captured Kirkbride's spirit of compassion - of angels in the architecture - in a book that conveys the human element of mental illness with beauty and integrity.
Reviews / Votes
Heidi Johnson has written a profoundly moving book - her images haunt like dreams. She is both artist and historian, photographer and prose poet. Her hard work here has rescued from darkness a part of history, a part of the soul. - Doug Stanton, author of In Harm's WayMore details
Series
Edition
Revised edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Detroit, MI
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
113 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
743 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8143-3212-2 (9780814332122)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Heidi Johnson is a professional photographer whose clients include Michigan Land Use Institute, Hour Detroit Magazine, Warner Brothers, Best Buy Corporation, and the state of Michigan. She is a former artist-in-residence in photography at interlochen Arts Academy.