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rachaelmaddux:

(via Ashley, via Kitsune Noir, via Dwell)

From Christopher Payne’s Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals.

In the context of a slideshow, it’s difficult to have anything more than a purely aesthetic reaction to these photos, even though the individual histories of these places and the people once kept there must be as heartbreaking as they are beautiful and eerie. I know it’s mostly just due to the time period in which these places were built, furnished and then left for dead, but it’s discomfiting, this line between abandoned psychiatric facility and the shabby mid-century chic of so many interiors blogs I follow. Hopefully I’m not the only one who saw this photo below, in particular, and reacted to the row of Eames-like chairs before the sight of that stark examination table in the middle of the room and what appears to be some kind of drill laying off to the side.