Mary Ellen Mark [Foreword]; Bill Diodato [Photographer];

Recalling Christoper Payne's Asylum, Bill Diodato's book "remembers [the] long forgotten women who occupied the Oregon State Mental Asylum's Ward 81." (The Oregon State Mental Asylum is best known as the location of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.) Diodato's carefully composed photographs of the empty and decaying asylum -- demolished in 2009 -- is a snapshot of a troubled place that appears to have been enlivened with bold colors of paint and wall drawings, each hinting at the personalities once housed within its walls. Those interested in the place's past should also look at Mary Ellen Mark's photographs from 1976, when she captured the residents of Ward 81 on black-and-white film.… (mehr)