“Photographer Jon Crispin has a fascination with things that are left behind. Those are his exact words. “Even as a kid I was trying to get into places I shouldn’t go,” he says on the phone.
In the ’80s he was basically given free rein to document abandoned asylums in New York state. He has also worked closely and often with the New York State Museum, including on some Sept. 11 preservation projects.
Crispin’s latest fascination is with old suitcases — discovered by the New York State Museum in an attic of the Willard Psychiatric Center in Willard, N.Y. “The cases were put into storage when their owners were admitted to Willard sometime between 1910 and the 1960s,” Crispin explains on a Kickstarter page, where he is raising funds to continue photographing. “And since the facility was set up to help people with chronic mental illness, these folks never left.”
Fascinating. I love the concept. Nice Post.