Images of Austerity from the Wesley College Documentation Project

One of the coolest things about being the editor of a little magazine like NDQ is that I have a platform to support the work of my extraordinary colleagues and every now and then I can let my other interests bleed over into the Quarterly’s page.  A few years ago, I co-edited a volume on slow (NDQ 80.3 (2013)) and in the most recent volume, we included a photo essay by Wyatt Atchley called “Images of Austerity” which contributes to a special section on the Humanities in the Age of Austerity. 

Wyatt took the photographs in this essay during the Wesley College Documentation Project, and the photographs feature the now-demolished Corwin-Larimore and Robertson-Sayre Halls. 

The argument that Wyatt’s photographs make is not explicit, but implicit. It makes visible the relationship between austerity and waste, consumption, and neglect present on just one of the many campuses around the world enduring the often paradoxical consequences of austerity.

Check out his essay and some of the photographs here. Check out more of his photographs from the project here.  And download and read the entire volume including the section on the Humanities in the Age of Austerity here.