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Asylum: Photographer Christopher Payne captures the interiors of America's former mental hospitals

We tend to think of mental hospitals as places of nightmarish squalor and abuse—and this is how they have been portrayed in modern culture. Few people, however, realise these institutions were once monuments of American civic pride, built with noble intentions by leading architects and physicians, who envisioned the asylums as places of refuge, therapy, and healing.

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Via Creative Boom submission. All images courtesy of Christopher Payne.

Via Creative Boom submission. All images courtesy of Christopher Payne.

In his series Asylum, photographer Chris Payne visited 70 institutions in thirty states, capturing palatial exteriors designed by famous architects and crumbling interiors that appeared as if the occupants had just left. He also documented how the hospitals functioned as self-contained cities, where almost everything of necessity was produced on site: food, water, power, and even clothing and shoes. Since many of these places have been demolished, the photographs serve as their final, official record.

Speaking of the project on his website, Chris explains: "For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, more than 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948 they housed over half a million patients. But over the next thirty years, with the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these massive buildings neglected and abandoned."

Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals was published as a book by MIT Press in 2009 and includes an essay by the renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks. To discover more about Chris, visit www.chrispaynephoto.com.

Overgrown brick and stone buildings with tall chimneys and mansard roofs, designed as a former American mental hospital asylum, surrounded by wild vegetation
A long arched corridor in an abandoned asylum lined with wooden doors on both sides, with peeling plaster on the walls and ceiling, natural light streaming through windows at the far end
White cotton jacket with metal buttons and drawstring hem hanging on a wire hanger against a grey wall
Deteriorating room with peeling turquoise and cream paint on walls, filled with stacked cardboard boxes, with a white doorway leading to another room beyond
Deteriorating green-painted corridor with peeling ceiling plaster, large windows, and a single red chair facing through a golden-framed doorway to further rooms beyond
A long corridor with terracotta-red walls and white doorways receding into the distance, with a red door visible at the far end
Two wooden shelving units displaying rows of paintbrushes with coloured handles, arranged in holes across multiple shelves, from a former American asylum
Colourful fabric bolts and rolls stacked haphazardly in an abandoned hospital room with large windows and peeling walls
Circular glass porthole mounted on a heavily weathered wooden door with peeling paint, revealing a dim institutional corridor beyond
Symmetrical shelving in an abandoned asylum storeroom displays rows of terracotta-coloured bottles and jars, with a central white pillar dividing left and right sides
Long abandoned corridor lined with doorways and arched alcoves, with faded pastel walls, worn tile flooring and natural light streaming through distant windows
Deteriorating green-walled corridor with a grand marble staircase featuring ornate railings, leading to an arched doorway in an abandoned asylum building
Cluttered interior room stacked with worn vintage suitcases, trunks and storage boxes on shelves, with peeling walls and abandoned belongings scattered on the floor
Aerial view of a grand Victorian-era brick building with multiple spires and chimneys, surrounded by autumn woodland and distant hills at sunset
Victorian stone castle with twin peaked roofs and turrets, photographed in black and white against a dark sky
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