"Angels in the Architecture" is a fascinating study of the abandoned Traverse City State Hospital (formerly known as the Northern Michigan Asylum) in Traverse City, Michigan. The book contains many interesting snippets from asylum record books as well as fascinating recollections from former patients and nurses. But the real reason to purchase this book is to see Heidi Johnson's mesmerizing black and white and infrared photography. She has a gift for making the mundane look profound and she brings the sadness, loneliness, and poignancy of these old buildings to brilliant life.

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Product Description

In the nineteenth century, perhaps no approach to mental illness was more compassionate than that of hospital administrator Thomas Story Kirkbride, whose asylum designs integrated beauty and nature as a method to treat patients. The Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City, Michigan, was one of the last of nearly tow hundred such architecturally intriguing asylums. Founded in 1885 under the principle "beauty is therapy," the Northern Michigan Asylum closed in 1989 and today stands as a haunting reminder of this lost era. Angels in the Architecture is a photographic study of this institution's one-hundred-year history. Heidi Johnson's photographs of the building today are juxtaposed with rare images from private collections and state archives. Johnson has captured Kirkbride's spirit of compassion - of angels in the architecture - in a book that conveys the human element of mental illness with beauty and integrity.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70977 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 212 pages

Review
"Heidi Johnson has written a profoundly moving book - her images haunt like dreams. She is both artist and historian, photographer and prose poet. Her hard work here has rescued from darkness a part of history, a part of the soul." - Doug Stanton, author of In Harm's Way"

About the Author
Heidi Johnson is a professional photographer whose clients include Michigan Land Use Institute, Hour Detroit Magazine, Warner Brothers, Best Buy Corporation, and the state of Michigan. She is a former artist-in-residence in photography at interlochen Arts Academy.

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Customer Reviews

This book was an experience
The somewhat haunting photographs of the interior of the asylum makes one try to imagine how life was for those souls who lived there. The beautiful architecture of those majestic buildings and well-manicured grounds is a testament to an era of compassion. There is one photograph in particular that caught my attention, on page 185 that has what appears to be a ghostly image of a man standing in the doorway of room 50. A book you can look at over and over again and see new things in the detailed photographs.

Spectacular!
This book should be required reading in Psych 101 classes. Photography classes as well.

The author gently uses her camera and prolific writing style to tell a story that both inspires and shocks you at the same time. There are incredible amounts of patient and staff histories both touching and surprising. The book inspires one to ponder the life of each person profiled.

One can only hope that Johnson continues along the same lines and creates another masterpiece like Angels in the Architecture.

a touching and true history...
As a former employee of this hospital, I give this book my stamp of approval. It is a great history because it is told through the voice of people that were there and their stories brought memories flooding back to me. I laughed and I cried. The photographs reminded me of everything that happened at this place...good and bad. It is masterfully crafted book...the photographs are amazing...the stories are riveting and more importantly, true. I have read everything printed on the history of the former Traverse City State Hosptial and this is far and away the most informative...I thought I knew all the history but Miss Johnson revealed facts and details I never knew...the research is terrific.
I am so happy a book like this was finally published and I am honored to have it in my collection.