These
hollow halls echo with laughter and pain — the lunacy of mental illness.
Erected in 1856, the Northampton State Hospital was one of the first state
hospitals built in the United States. Today, it is a mere shadow of its once
bright future — an eerie reflection of the lost souls that called it
home. In each uncertain doorway, each anxious window, each suspicious stairwell,
we sense the dark gaze of the moon — the subtle glimpses of hope, and
the forlorn acceptance of fate. And yet, in this haunting series of photos,
Anna Schuleit has not written a requiem, but rather, she has orchestrated
a grand tribute to an august building that, like its former inhabitants, has
been abandoned, cast off from society, stripped of its dignity, and put into
“disuse.”
