Library of Dust

"Dust is a peculiar substance. Less a material in its own right, with its own characteristics or color, dust is a condition . . . Dust is a potpourri of ingredients, varied to the point of indefinability. Dust includes 'dead insect parts, flakes of human skin, shreds of fabric, and other unpleasing materials'" (Geoff Manaugh quoting Joseph Amato, in David Maisel, Library of Dust, Chronicle Books, 2008).

Library of Dust is one of "those" books. It will dent your psyche (maybe in a good way). Set in my hometown—Salem, Oregon—it is a somber, sobering, fascinating, photographic, right-thinking rumination in humane terms on a non-human, perhaps even inhumane collection.

Library of Dust chronicles and depicts the decomposing copper canisters that carried the cremated remains of the former Oregon State Hospital inmates who had gone unclaimed. Library of Dust is comprised of four stellar essays and arresting, full-color, full-page photographs of the copper-coated tins. The size perhaps of one of Popeye’s cans of spinach, they are oceanic of appearance, encrusted in unique patinas of color and texture. Bound handsomely in illustrated black pictorial boards in folio hardcover format, measuring 17 1/2" x 13 1/4" in height and width, respectively, the what appear to be scuffings of and rubbings to the book’s tips and extremities are in fact purposeful. They are a faithful mimesis of the burnishings of the canisters themselves. The title is rendered in miniscule font at front cover head. The heavy black card stock endpapers in double-page, too, however, are just as evocative. The two pages feature faint numbers from a single digit to four digits; they look like stars in a constellation, but they instead denote a former human being’s existence.

Library of Dust is assembled jointly by Bay Area-based David Maisel and three interlocutors. Geoff Manaugh contributes "Mineral Kinship," Terry Toedtemeier, "The Soul Remains: a mineralogical account of the remarkable transformation of the cremation canisters at the Oregon State Hospital," Michael S. Roth, “Graves of the Insane, Decorated," and finally, the photographer’s contribution, “The Library and its Self-Contained Double."

Most of the canisters are larger at their bases than at their heads. The copper canisters are not unlovely but have, instead, a worker-like, handmade quality to them. Some are burnished brightly; others are depressingly dull. From some of them bloom colorful corrosion, and from some of the seams are well-nigh unto splitting. Some have numbers stamped into them, like shotgun shell casings, and yet others have abraded paper labels still affixed to them. The lowest number registered is 01, and the highest is 5,121. The cremains of at least 5,121 human beings were housed until recently in this Library of Dust.

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