New book photographically documents the closed world of state mental hospitals

From The New York Times:

ASYLUM: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals features photographs by Christopher Payne and an essay by Oliver Sacks. (216 pp. MIT Press. $39.95.)

Payne, a photographer and architect, visited 70 abandoned psychiatric institutions in 30 states over six years, documenting the decay of formerly glorious buildings, where in another era patients “could be both mad and safe,” as Sacks writes. (Sacks’s book “Awakenings” was inspired by his work at a hospital in the Bronx.)

In the picture, toothbrushes still hang at the Hudson River State Hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.