Media Library Timing Out, Crashing Browser

I am having an issue with using the Media Library on a site that has around 1100 photos. The photos are not extraordinarily large. Most were taken with an older point and shoot camera.

Here are the steps to reproduce the issue:
– Start a new post
– Attempt to ‘Add Media’ into the post with the media button.
– Grid of images slowly starts to appear
– After about 5-10 seconds, the page times out. Google Chrome crashes.

About 3 months ago, I switched the site to use the WordPress JetPack image service called ‘Photon’.

What I have done to debug:
– turned off/on Photon – which doesn’t really have an effect on photos already uploaded to Photos, and that is where the Media Library is fetching them from.
– installed WP-Super Cache, configured it, no change.
– installed WP Total Cache, configured it, no change.

Anyone else have these issues? Or run into something similar?
I feel like WP is trying to load the FULL SIZE images in the media library picker. I also feel like there is no caching being applied to the request of these images in the Admin.
But these are just assumptions.

Any thoughts or ideas about how to proceed would be great.
-jeremy