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Tag: North Brother Island

A Photo Story from North Brother Island

Okay people, I am a sucker for the photo essay so I will likely be posting a lot of them here. Enjoy!

First, I bring you a story-in-images from photographer Richard Nickel, Jr. He recently paid a visit to North Brother Island, an island off the coast of New York in the East River. North Brother Island was home to a hospital intended to quarantine smallpox patients in the late 1800s. The hospital later expanded to include quarantine patients of many diseases, including the infamous “Typhoid Mary.” Over the years the hospital has closed and reopened a number of times, once to house war veterans, once to rehabilitate drug addicts. This hospital was closed in the 1960s due to staff corruption. Nickel visited the island and documented what remains. Check out the full photo essay on Nickel’s blog.

The refrigeration room in the morgue. Individual cabinets for corpses were not used in this morgue. Mary Mallon – widely known as Typhoid Mary – worked in the pathology lab in the same building during her second confinement on the island.©Richard Nickel, Jr.

A typical two-room dorm inside the nurses’ residence. One half provided sleeping quarters for 1 or 2 nurses, and the other half was a lounge area, with a private sink. ©Richard Nickel, Jr.

About Me

About me

After a photojournalism degree and a short stint as a lead photographer/photo editor at a news web site, I decided it was time to branch out on my own. I specialize in editorial food and travel photography but dabble in a little bit of everything.

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