During the weekend of October 17-18, 1998, torrential rains fell over south and southeast Texas. Up to 22 inches of rain fell which first resulted in deadly flash flooding from San Antonio to Austin followed by record breaking river floods along several south Texas rivers the following week. Based on provisional data from the USGS, which is subject to revision, the flood peak for this event was the highest known peak stage at 15 locations. Tragically, a total of 31 people died during the event (26 drownings, 2 tornado deaths, 2 heart attacks, and 1 electrocution/drowning). At least 17 of the drowning victims were in vehicles which were either driven into water or were swept away by rapidly rising water. Preliminary property damage estimates approached three quarters of a billion dollars.
In 1631, the Capuchin friars – so-called because of the “capuche” or hood attached to their religious habit – left the friary of St. Bonaventure near the Trevi Fountain and came to live in the present one, of which only the church and cemetery remain. The remains of the deceased friars were transported from the old friary and laid to rest in this cemetery, underneath the present church. The bones were arranged along the walls, and the friars began to bury their own dead here, as well as the bodies of poor Romans, whose tomb was under the floor of the present Mass chapel.
Here the Capuchins would come to pray and reflect each evening before retiring for the night. Over the years, until 1870, further alterations transformed this burial place into the work of art we see today. Its message is clear: death closes the gates of time, and opens those of eternity.
Had I the power that some say Dian had,
Thy temples should be planted presently
With horns, as was Actaeon’s; and the hounds
Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs,
Unmannerly intruder as thou art! Shakespeare , Titus Andronicus 2.3.61
These indelible images of abandoned asylums in the American landscape from Christopher Payne are amazing. His most recent book *Asylum : Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals* not only shows a vanishing landscape but even clearer the results after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts towards community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these buildings neglected and abandoned.
A while ago I visited the Huis Marseille (foundation for photography) in Amsterdam to see the photo exhibition on the theme *OIL* by Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky’s large-scale landscape photographs deftly allow us to see oil– Monumental and highly detailed images, a beautiful use of patterns and colour, and how to combine nature with the man made (and what man has made of nature). I combined them w/ photos I shot over the years of Ameland, a municipality and one of the West Frisian Islands off the north coast of the Netherlands.
