2 image Pano taken with a Canon 17 TS-E
Sadly much of the morgue at this state hospital had been destroyed, but the morgue drawers and doors still remain.
Photo: "Georgia State Hospital Morgue"
Construction began on this building at a Georgia State Hospital in 1928. It was named after the hospital's superintendent at the time and remained in operation until 1979.
Photo: "Morgue Doors"
This was the last location we explored during our trip to the Southern United States last May.
I was so ecstatic to find a mostly in-tact morgue with drawers and doors. I realize that may sound "crazy" to most people, but it's an artifact of these asylums/hospitals that is usually destroyed or full of graffiti.
Photo: "Cleaner"
Inside the morgue building at Hudson River Psychiatric Hospital in New York.
Photo: "Back to the Morgue"
I had the opportunity to revisit the Marine Hospital on a recent trip and I knew I wanted to spend some time in the beautiful morgue again, in an attempt to get a more refined shot.
For the image below, I used one 125w LED panel to light the entire space. First, I set the panel inside the hood, aimed it upward, over the table and left it for a minute and a half on a low setting. Then I removed the light, placed it on the ground off-camera to the left and bounced it off the ceiling for another minute and a half at full power.
Photo: "Marine Hospital Morgue"
It's often hard for others to comprehend my interest in morgues. To most, morgues are considered depressing, gross or creepy. While I recognize these morgues resemble something many of us are afraid of, death, they are much like an endangered species that you have been lucky enough to stumble upon.
When many of these asylums close, they often begin to experience foot traffic by kids, explorers, scrappers and taggers. For some reason morgues seem to be where people gravitate when they explore these hospitals. Sometimes scrappers will have taken the metal parts, but most often I find that taggers have put their names all over the tile walls and morgue doors, which to me, generally makes the morgue unworthy of a photograph. It is incredibly rare to find a complete morgue, undisturbed for decades.
This morgue was in a pitch black basement. To light the scene, I used 3 flashlights: one bounced inside the hood (cool LED), one out of frame to the left (incandescent) and one out of frame to the right in the hallway (also incandescent.) My hope was to convey a natural looking scene, rather than something that appeared to have been light painted.
Photo: "Morgue Table"
This New York psychiatric hospital opened to the public in 1931 with 60 only male patients, though they had beds to support over 5,000. The hospital was designed as a "theraputic suburb," where patients could leave the noise and pollution of the city and seek treatments to cure their illness. By 1959, the hospital reached it peak and was home to 9,000 residents, including a staff of 2,000.
Photo: "Morgue"
Though Alcatraz had a Morgue, no autopsies were actually performed here. Bodies were stored there until they could be transported to San Francisco and released to the Coroner.
