Sunday Soliloquies no. 2: A haunting tragedy

Detroit Public Library, Mark Twain Branch, Detroit, Michigan

This image to me, is by far the scariest thing I have seen this Halloween season. The demise of the Detroit Public Library, Mark Twain Branch is not new news. More upsetting images can be found on flickr at  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bpdphotography/sets/72157626713779604/

It closed for renovations in 1996 and unfortunately, never re-opened.

But there’s no blood and gore! No skeletons, no creepy spiders, no boiling cauldrons of smelly goo…. How can I think this is scary? Take a good long look at it. Make it your wallpaper, stare at it, and try not to be terrified. I dare you. From the viewer’s perspective, you might be at the entrance to this large, nearly vacant room. A misplaced couch and two armchairs dwarfed by the enormous windows and fireplace bemoan a solitary torment. There are no books, and no other vestiges of a library. The silence, the loneliness, and the emptiness disturbs. I am getting very uncomfortable.  Are you?

What do you see? What does this image “say” to you?

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