Flickr / Assignment 5

I admire the courage and determination of urban explorers, especially those who bravely go into the abandoned mental hospitals that I find most fascinating.  The Athens State Hospital in Athens, Ohio is an excellent example.  I have visited the hospital and taken many photos of my own that focus on the more wistful elements still visible: curtains rustled by a breeze through a broken window; a hallway; a room that contains a gurney and yellowed newspapers.  The one thing that separates me from real urban explorers, however, is the fact that I've never been inside.  I envy their dedication to photographing equipment, furniture, signage and other reminders that this was once a vibrant, self-sustaining hospital.

The bottom line is that I had no idea how many urban explorers had uploaded their hard won photographs for the enjoyment of people like me.  I only had to search "everyone's uploads" for "Athens State Hospital" to find exactly what I was looking for.  The results were pages and pages of photos of the inside of the hospital looking out, which is precisely the perspective I have never been able to get.  Clearly, this tag is the most popular.  I also tried searching for "Athens Asylum," which brought up many of the same interior pictures and quite a few of the exterior of the buildings.

The hospital was known by many names from 1874 to 1993, so I tried a couple of other searches: "Athens Lunatic Asylum" (1872-1876), which brought up photos from a very serious urban explorer who told the story of playing cat and mouse with the cops after breaking into the TB ward to get some interesting shots with a decaying piano.  This person clearly felt for the children who died in this building; her photos capture the children's area like no others I've seen.  Next, I tried "Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center" (1968-1969).  There wasn't even a single page of exterior results; evidently this tag is much less widely known.

My Flickr ID is Kristen_Hallows, and the gallery name is Athens State Hospital.  This gallery is, in my opinion, a selection of some of the most poignant photographs generously uploaded by urban explorers to Flickr.  Many of them show the view from the inside of many of the windows I've captured from the outside.  The decay, of course, is part of the appeal of urban exploration; these photos can make you feel like you're getting an unauthorized glimpse inside a time capsule.

Overall, I'm grateful for and impressed by Flickr.  I have found a resource that allows me to satisfy at least part of my curiosity, and these photos are the reason urban explorers do what they do; I imagine that it's also very gratifying for them to upload the pictures they risked their safety to obtain.  This is also a good example of the effectiveness of tagging.  I did not have to search by all names of the hospital in order to find what I was seeking; all I had to do was search for one, which is the most popular: Athens State Hospital.  If I wanted to do a more academic, thorough search, I could go through all names ever given to the hospital; but I would say that 90 percent of my information need was met by entering that first search term, which is remarkable.