Dr.Harvey Cushing / Yale
I was at Yale in November speaking to Jessica Helfand’s class about the suitcase project. I had done it last year and it was a great experience again this time. At lunch Jessica introduced me to Joanna Radin who teaches in the Med School and she mentioned that some of Dr. Harvey Cushing’s artifacts were in a small office in the library and offered to take me to see them. Last year I visited the Cushing Center to see the brain collection and I was excited to learn more about him.
Cushing was an incredible diarist and photographer. His entire life is documented to a degree that is almost incomprehensible. The above volumes contain his World War 1 journals and correspondence.
The correspondence during this period gives a fascinating view into the minutia of a wartime surgeon. Volume after volume of military records. This guy saved everything!
I only had a short amount of time and could have spent weeks photographing the collection. I wonder who the “Southern gentleman” referred to was. Clearly someone who wasn’t much liked by his peers.
A big thank you to the folks at the School of Medicine Library for giving me access to these materials. They have a great website set up where it is possible to view some of the collections that have been digitized. Check it out.
Emancipation Proclamation
On the first of January bells were rung around Massachusetts at 2 pm to commemorate the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. I had heard that Pelham was going to join in and we went up to the historical society to have a look. This building used to be a church. It was built in 1839 when the government made the town move the worship area out of the town hall due to separation of church and state. The town hall (built 1743) is right next door and is interesting in that it is the oldest town hall in continuous use in the United States. The October town meeting is convened in it and then moved down to the school to be able to hold everyone. Pelham is also interesting in that it is the home of Daniel Shays. It is worth reading about him if you are interested in American history. His story is amazing.
Anyway, we arrived at the historical society and a few folks had shown up to participate. The single bell in the belfry was cast in England in the 1830s and has been out of service for a long time. Somehow enough money was found to conduct an engineering assessment of the structure to make sure that if it were rung the whole thing wouldn’t just collapse. It checked out OK (as they say); a new pull rope was attached and it was ready to go. We all took our turns and it was a surprisingly moving experience.
Air Force Two
I had to take my iMac over to Dan to have the hard drive replaced (Apple warranty). Fortunately it hadn’t died yet so not much more than an inconvenience. I have been keeping my laptop open in order to skype with Cris in the West Bank and the screen saver went to a folder of postcards that I used to make and send out to friends. I really like some of these images and realized I could share them here on my wordpress site. It’s fun to think just how much of an impact the digital world has had on photography. I used to print 10 or 15 of these and mail them to friends and clients. Now I can post this and who knows how many people will see it./ This picture was taken at the airport in Elmira, NY. I spent a lot of time covering the 1984 presidential race, and I think this was the Bush VP plane. It reminded me of the election on Tuesday and thought it would be a good time to encourage everyone here in the States to get out and vote.
1969 Ford Torino GT
I have been driving past this car for quite some time. Today was a good day to stop and take some photos. Torinos were based on the Fairlane platform and as I learned on wikipedia, the name Torino gradually replaced the Fairlane badge. The ones I really remember are the GT versions of which this is a 1969 example. When I first saw these cars, I thought they were quite ugly, but in time they have really grown on me.
This one is mostly covered in primer, but you can note from the pictures that the original color is still evident in some places.
This blue/green is the only color I can recall on this vintage of the GT model. / There are two Ford Torinos in my past. My college roommate Gail had one our Senior year. I am pretty sure it wasn’t a GT, but it could well have been. I remember her coming back to school from Ridgeway, PA where her family lived and telling me that her dad would give her a few extra dollars to put “a tank of Ethyl” in it. And my friend Paul who now lives in Arizona had a really nice GT that he has since sold. He did a lot of work on it himself and in fact one day he drove it out from Boston and tinkered around with it in my driveway.
So, this one is for sale. Paul? Gail?
Vietnam Memorial and SAAM
Cris and I are in DC visiting Peter. He is amazing and is doing really well. We took the time for a quick visit to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I can never get enough of it and I always come back to this part of the building which is near the Lunder Conservation Center. If any of you reading this are in the area and have never been here you really should make the effort. There is a great wood fired pizza place a couple of blocks away called The Matchbox. Get a small pizza and see some art!
Two of my friends from Meadville were killed in Viet Nam. Jim Rudd was a neighbor whom I knew quite well. We spent a lot of time together at the YMCA and I can remember his talking about his interest in Native American culture. He was a very sweet guy. He was a private in the Marines and died on 6 August, 1968.
I knew David Dragosavac less well, but Meadville was small and I am pretty sure we were on the Y swim team together at one point. David was a Sergeant in the Army and was killed on 1 April, 1970.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is really worth a visit. Very moving.
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.
Sunday in PA and Ohio
Today, Peter and I drove from Meadville to Cleveland, mostly on Route 322. It was a cool gray morning and 322 is a road that I have ridden on and driven many times. The fields were so green and lush; soy beans and field corn grown mostly on small family farms. I had wanted to stop and photograph on our way to the Indians game, but I felt a bit of pressure to get to the stadium and park with plenty of time to spare. It was a great game for the many Sox fans that made the trip with Boston winning 14-1. Afterwards Peter and I had an amazing meal at Mallorca.
As we were driving back to Meadville I was again taken by the rural beauty of Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. The roads are in quite good shape and the farms are nicely kept. This shot is facing East on Ohio Route 167 not far from the PA line. There was so little traffic that I just stopped the car in the road to take it.
I stopped to photograph the fields on the way home and found myself thinking about the farmers in the midwest who are suffering through one of the worst droughts in recent history. Not four hundred miles west of here in Indiana the corn is dying for lack of rain. And yet the farmers in this part of the world seem to be in the midst of a bumper crop. I actually thought that if the Indiana farmers saw these fields they might cry.
And finally, our route back to Meadville took us through Linesville, PA. I got the chance to show Peter the famous spillway on Pymatuning Lake where the “ducks walk on the fishes backs”. I know it is really bizarre, but it is something I grew up with and it doesn’t seem that weird. We met a nice woman who is driving across the country visiting places like this. Here’s a link to her blog.
Hadley Hall Projection Room
This is a bit of an experiment. When I was out at Willard recently, I shot the bowling alley in Hadley Hall and then went upstairs to the projection room. The lighting was the weirdest I have come across. I shoot most of this stuff in RAW, so that I have tons of latitude when it comes to editing the photos. I messed around with these images for a long time and I could NOT get the color to look good. The walls were yellowish and there were mixed fluorescents. Rather than get discouraged and stuff the whole idea of a post I decided to convert to black and white and see how they look online. Funny, since in the days of film I used to shoot this sort of thing in black and white much of the time.
The tradition for the projectionists was to write the name of the film and the date it was shown on the walls.
Lots of interesting films here. For example, “All Fall Down” was shown on 13 January, 1963, and Apache Rifles got a (Good) rating.
And here “The Glass Slipper” was shown on 14 April, 1956. And these were all 35mm prints!
What really interests me about the asylum having shown first run movies is that the residents of the institution were able to attend, as were the people who lived in the surrounding towns. From what I have been told, the townsfolk sat in the balcony and the asylum residents sat downstairs.
I like these notes for the projectionist. There must have been someone downstairs who could send some sort of signal in case of a problem.
The projection room seemed to me to be almost totally intact. The sheet of paper here might be hard to read online, but at the top of the list is “Back To The Future”.
Here’s another of the projection lenses. A beautifully made optic.
There was still quite a bit of paperwork lying around.
I was just blown away by this room and its contents.
It is really hard to put into words just how fortunate I am to get into places like this, and how important it is to me to be able to preserve images of something that very few people can see for themselves.
So, thank you all for checking in and encouraging me to do this kind of work. I am off to Rotterdam tomorrow to shoot more suitcases and will post an update to that project very soon.
Hadley Hall Bowling Alley
On Friday I got the chance to get into Hadley Hall on the site of the former Willard Psychiatric Center. The Romulus Historical Society was setting up the annual display of Willard suitcases and I helped out a bit by moving some boxes around. There were two areas of interest to me, and this post is about the first of those. Hadley Hall was the recreation facility for the asylum and was built in 1892. The building is dominated by a beautiful auditorium complete with a fully functional stage set-up. On the lower level is this bowling alley. According to people I have spoken to, the alley was used by both staff and patients.
And I believe that the lanes were used up until the psych center closed in the mid 1990s.
The system for resetting the pins and returning the balls was mechanical only to a degree. Someone back here behind the pins waited for the ball to arrive. It would be returned via the wooden track and the pins would be reset (depending on a strike or spare). The mechanical part of the operation involved the pins being dropped onto the lane once they were loaded onto the mechanism (see below).
When people were bowling, the place must have really been hopping.
It is so interesting to me that most of the components of the alley were still here and relatively intact.
The pins certainly look well used.
This is a very cool ball.
I am constantly reminded how fortunate I am to have access to these spaces.
Tomorrow I am back in Rotterdam shooting suitcases, but I hope to post part two of my visit to Hadley Hall later in the week.
Giulio Cesare
I had some work at Princeton yesterday and as I was shooting some panoramas in the fine arts building I saw this guy sitting alone on a table in a hallway. He is about only 3 inches tall and still looked like he had total control of his realm. I wonder if this is what Caesar really looked like. He has a very commanding presence.
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