Staunton

Every night after we’ve been out on an abandoned site shoot I lie in my bed and feel for coal miners who suffered from black lung disease. Having seen an actual black lung recently, I think of the way coal dust accumulates in the breathing apparatus – clogging the alveoli, hardening the bellow and shrinking it to an unusable size. The air in yesterday’s buildings was heavy with asbestos, black mold, lead paint dust, and decades of sweat and toil. In Staunton, VA, the DeJarnette facility began as a Lunatic Asylum that later became Western State Prison. Now it’s being converted into condominiums. One building is completed the others in various stages of readiness. Most of the flavor of the prison, and the asylum, has already been removed. We went into rooms where dust and paint chips had been swept into a neat pile at the side of the room, garbage bags full of peeled paint and construction trash were carefully grouped by the door awaiting pick up. Doors and fixtures had been removed, and evidence of new construction was pervasive both inside and out. Mostly it felt like shooting a building renovation. The occasional remnant of prison life reminded us of the place’s second purpose. But from this shoot the biggest souvenir was that fiberglass feel in my lungs with every inhale as I slept.