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VISIT #1
The Tank Room is located in the basement, down the hall form the morgue, and captured my imagination more than any other room in the building. The tank room is a poured concrete and cinderblock room encircled with metal braces. The metal braces held oxygen tanks and the words, 'FULL” and “EMPTY” are stenciled onto the walls. In the corner, I built a pedestal out of an errant trashcan, a palette and a wooden panel and climbed atop with my camera and tripod. The following three wide angle shots (28 mm lens) were taken from this location:

The following three images were shot from the floor. In all of these images I used a single clamp light, powered by a portable batter. Most of my tank room shots are lit from below.

On my first visit to the Tank Room, I noticed this moth on the wall. I found it so strange and magical that she would be living there alone in the dark. I shot her image and immediately after I depressed the shutter release she stretched her wings, casting a long and glorious shadow on the wall. I wanted her to stretch again for another shot, so I touched her backside…and nothing happened. So I touched her front, but she flew away. The image on the right captures our ghostlike movement through the frame.

While processing the images from my first visit to the Tank Room, I realized again how struck I was by the space. In particular, the braces' function as a metaphor for the physical restraint of human beings seemed especially important to me, and the coincidence of the moth - a figure of transformation, the oddness of finding it in the dark and its flight to freedom all seemed meaningful. On my second visit to the Tank Room I brought Greta, one of my favorite models. I'd wanted to re-create and add a person to the image of the moth. To this end, I'd intended but had forgotten to purchase a butterfly from a shop on Hawthorne. Coincidentally, on a superfluous trip to the truck, I found an expired butterfly on a window ledge in the corridor to the Green Doors. It was perfect! And I pinned it to the Tank Room wall in the following shots: