Brian currently lives somewhere in
Pennsylvania with his wife Kate.
"The
chair photo is probably my favorite that i've taken... it was shot at
a closed mental institution back in PA near my parents home. There was
a lot of abuse at the facility and was closed practically overnight...
i mean, the hallways of the buildings still have carts in them as if
the workers were tapped on the shoulder and told to leave immediately.
You can do a search on the internet for Penhurst or Pennhurst (sp?) in
PA and find some crazy info on the "hospital", etc.
They basically let the patients go, some were relocated to other
hospitals, but many were just let loose to roam the town, homeless and
without care.
Now, there's
a brand new veterans hospital built on the grounds of Penhurst, but
the old campus is where the stories/myths come from... how some still
live in the abandoned buildings, the tunnels below the ground that
were used in bad weather to go from building to building, or for young
kids to sneak in at night to see what they can find... the
straightjackets, padded helmets, and other medical odds and ends.
My friend
Matt and i spent half a day there shooting b & w and colour film.
Then we were stopped by security and told to leave, but at the time
Matt was working with older retarded men in Philly and some of
his co-workers came from Penhurst... i was working at KidsPeace (the
national center for kids in crisis) so with Matt's experience and
mine, the security guy let us finish shooting as long as we didn't go
inside any of the buildings (because that's where the crazy people
still lived).
We met an old
patient riding a bike with no tires, just rims... stuttering and eager
to talk, he muttered the fact that "some of us still live in
here... it's warm in the winter... yeah... this is where we
live..."
So the
security guy followed us around in his car while we finished the last
leg of the campus.....see, it's state owned, so it's a bigger
offense/fine... it's breaking state law not just little town laws, or
county laws... All the photos came out great, though. It
was an eerie day to begin with, coupled with an eerie place... perfect
actually.
Although, i
will tell you this... walking between the buildings with doors half
on/half off. I've never smelled such a potent smell of sulfur/death
ever in my life. Are you familiar with the odor that a dead deer
gives off after it's been hit and lying on the road for a few days in
the summer sun, when the animal control people haven't got around to
scooping it off of the side of the road? Yeah that smell. Oh,
and the belly bloats and a strong odor of sulfur mixed with decay?
Well, being
from PA, we have pretty big deer and they get hit all the time, and
they decay on the roads all the time... so i'm pretty familiar with
the sulfur smell. Well, multiply that odor by a million and you're
close to the odor that escaped one of the buildings and found its way
into the nostrils of two guys with cameras. I'll never forget that
smell... ever..."
