Hello Mr. Morts, it's been a while since I've had time to visit. I see you've been busy, as I have been as well. I'm in the process of renovating a house we just bought. I've been thinking a lot about your photos as I peel away the layers of this house...I have some photos of my own that I took throughout the process. They look like some abandoned crumbling house. It is amazing what you can learn about a structure and the people who occupied it just by observing, without ever having met them.The smells, the wear marks on the walls and doors, what you find in the walls, under layers of plaster, under carpet...it's been fascinating. It makes me wonder what it feels like to see and feel these places in person.
Thanks for all the new galleries...I have a lot of catching up to do!

Larry D...makes you wonder why modern structures are slapped together, with all the technology we have now. They made such awesome buildings with nothing but their hands hundreds of years ago.

Great textures in this one.

If not for the door, it could be an old house or something, the door gives it a real institutional feel.

lol A D

Mr. Motts, do you know if the stairwells were built with no rails like that, or if they have decayed/ been stolen?

Again, the windows. Why does anyone build houses with square windows? Those are so beautiful.

How very Escher.

I'm so in love with those windows.

Stunning.

Some of these images I can easily visualize as an oil painting. Such vivid colors and contrast.

Yes, the heads are disproportionate to their bodies. Baby/toddler heads are much bigger in comparison to the rest of their bodies than adult's are, that's why they look so bizare, like miniature adults. We studied this in my drawing class when I was in college.

Someday, Mr. Motts, your photographs will be all that's left of these places. Eventually they will all be gone. Even if you don't make much of a profit off them, you should be proud that you're recording an important piece of history, and having a lot of fun in the meantime. No one else cares about these places enough to capture their beauty while they're still standing. They tell the story of the people who lived with mental illness at a time when there was little that could be done to treat them. It's a story that needs to be told.

Thank you for having the balls to climb up there to get this shot. Really impressive.

I've seen similar mechanisms in greenhouses.

I think it's interesting that you see all the crappy new houses in the background, like that's the real prison.

Yes Larry D, nightmarish. The sky is red.

It looks to me like it says EAST over the door...

Oh my, Mr. Motts. This one speaks to me. So beautiful, I love the sepia tone and the green vines complimenting eachother. I feel like I'm there, with nothing but the breeze blowing and twigs snapping under my feet. Is that a big pane of glass above the vines?

It took me a second to get the perspective in this one. At first glance I thought it was a close up of something.

So pretty.

A huge part of the celing in the house I grew up in caved in like this. I wasn't in the room to see it, but I heard the crash. The result of a leaking roof. We had a 6 foot wide gaping hole in the celing for days.

Mr. Motts, thanks for the new gallery. What is the dark outline around the center window?

Thanks for the info, Tina and Claudia. I've been a cook for many years, but never worked with a tilt kettle personally. I've seen them, tho. I think they're fascinating. Yeah, I'm kind of a dork for kitchen equipment.

Does anyone know what the slag cars are made of? What material is able to hold molten steel?