Sherry Leedy exhibit captures eerie, abandoned New York psychiatric hospital

Avery Danziger didn’t just create art, he introduced a mystery.

On one of the photographer’s many excursions to the abandoned Harlem Valley/Wingdale State Hospital in New York, he spent the night shooting the facility’s exterior. It wasn’t until he reviewed the images in his Connecticut studio that he noticed an apparition in the sky. A giant question mark.

“I, nor anyone else who has looked at this picture, have any idea what this is,” Danziger says. “There is the distinct possibility that this is a very unique and possibly exclusive image of something very extraordinary.”

For this particular photo session, he employed a long exposure on his Canon 5D Mark II, each lasting 30 seconds. The bluish white puffs that form the ghostly mark don’t appear on the shot before or after it.

He’s consulted pilots, meteorologists, physicists and even a NASA expert who have helped determine that the image hovers below the clouds and behind the building, but they’ve provided no certainty as to its cause.

“Rather than keep trying to pass it by various agencies, I thought I would crowdsource it at the show. I’m going to give away a $2,500 print to anybody who can figure out what this UFO really is and give another to anyone able to prove it’s a fake,” he says.

This photo is included in “Seeking Permanence,” a show dedicated to his Harlem Valley work that opens Friday at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art. Danziger will attend the 7 p.m. reception.

The former Missouri resident first came across the once-thriving psychiatric hospital (which operated from 1924-1994) purely by chance.

“It’s a story any Kansas City aficionado will love because in the pursuit of the best barbecue, I was heading back from a hole-in-the-wall place called Big W’s that happens to sit half a mile south of the complex,” Danziger recalls. “I pulled over to eat the barbecue — because I couldn’t wait — and started realizing how amazing the building was.”

The notion of photographing the place sure seemed simple. The reality, not so much.

“They did not give permission and would make a major effort to arrest anyone trespassing on their property,” the 62-year-old artist says.

His constant pestering and/or liberal delivery of cappuccinos to state administrators lasted a solid year until they caved.

“They eventually said I could. But I had to have one of their employees with me at all times, and we both had to wear hazmat suits,” he says.

Danziger devoted 30 separate sessions over three years to documenting the locale. He only utilized available light in revealing the remnants of a facility that once housed 5,000 patients and featured its own power station, dairy farm, baseball stadium and even a bowling alley. Now it’s a neglected morass of rust and decay. Lead paint, asbestos, chemical residue and pools of bacteria also remain.

“I’ve never photographed this type of thing before, and I don’t plan to do it again. It was the chaotic beauty that was so extraordinarily enticing for me,” he says.

“The Harlem Valley work — more than any other show — has drastically set off memories. So many people have had relatives there. So many were touched in a way they hadn’t experienced by viewing something so horrific that’s also so beautiful.”

Born and raised in North Carolina, the self-taught Danziger lived in Columbia from 1986 to 1994 and 2004 to 2010. It was while attending a show at KC’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art that he came across a realization about his own style.

“I went to this show highlighting a Japanese concept called ‘hakanasa.’ It means giving significance or importance to the insignificant. Fabulous show. It got me thinking about how much of my past work was just that. They are little slices of time of an event. They’re somewhere between making a film and a photograph,” he says.

Thus the name “Seeking Permanence.”

Danziger continues to migrate toward subjects that focus on a time and place. (“I don’t like to shoot people because every time I do, it looks like Diane Arbus came to your wedding,” he says.)

He dubs his most recent project “The Gate to Hell.” It stems from a journey to the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan to photograph an enormous crater the Soviets accidentally created decades ago while drilling for gas.

They purposely ignited it later, hoping to flush out leaking fumes. It’s been continually burning since 1971.

Danziger says, “What’s been intriguing me most for the last 10 or 15 years is the beauty of man’s hubris.”

Jon Niccum is a filmmaker, freelance writer and author of “The Worst Gig: From Psycho Fans to Stage Riots, Famous Musicians Tell All.”

This story was originally published June 3, 2015 at 3:00 AM with the headline "Sherry Leedy exhibit captures eerie, abandoned New York psychiatric hospital."