Maisel's Library of Dust book and art opening

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Several years ago, I blogged about photographer David Maisel's magnificent Library of Dust. The series of photos documented decaying copper canisters filled with ashes of mental patients who lived, and died, at the Oregon State Hospital between 1880s and the 1970s. (The hospital, soon to be demolished, was also the filming location for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.) I find David's photos to be lovely, haunting, and quite emotional. He's recently compiled them into a beautiful oversized book, Library of Dust, edited by old-school bOING bOING pal Alan Rapp and published by Chronicle Books. In celebration, San Francisco's Haines Gallery is mounting a solo exhibition of the large Library of Dust photographs. The show opens tonight and runs through October 4. From the Haines Gallery announcement:

Maisel began working with themes of memorialization in the 1980s, when he made aerial
photographs of sites that had undergone traumatic environmental impact. His earlier work
considered vast mineral deposits and copper mines, and it was in part Maisel's ongoing
involvement with the materiality of copper that led him to the Library of Dust canisters. "There are certainly physical and chemical explanations for the ways these canisters have transformed over time," says Maisel. "But perhaps the canisters also encourage us to consider what happens to our own bodies when we die, and what may happen to the souls that occupied our bodies. Matter, these canisters show, lives on when the body vanishes, even when it has been incinerated to ash by an institutional practice. Is it possible that some form of spirit lives on as well?"

Buy Library of Dust (Amazon),
David Maisel's Library of Dust (davidmaisel.com), Haines Gallery (hainesgallery.com)

Previously on BB:
David Maisel's Library of Dust
Cuckoo's Nest hospital to be demolished
• David Maisel's "Black Maps" photos