David Maisel’s Library of Dust.

David Maisel took these haunting photos of copper canisters containing the forgotten cremated remains of mental patients at the Oregon State Insany Asylum who died at the hospital from 1883 to the 1970s.

As I was setting up to photograph in a storage building that houses the cremated remains, prisoners from the local penitentiary were called in to clean up some of the mess in the adjacent hallway, crematorium, and autopsy room. A young male prisoner leaned into the room lined with the copper cans, scanned the room, and said in a low tone, "The library of dust.”

Link (via Boing Boing)