He shoots in concentration camps, sterile medical laboratories, crumbling archives, curious private collections. He notes that about 90% of his work is done in the Catholic world, places “richly fixated on the body of Mary, the body of Christ, the bodies of the martyrs” and with a “history of sensually violent and death-riddled art.” It’s a tradition that doesn’t exist in North America, and his book serves as a reminder of “everything we left; everything that made us, and somehow drove us to undo that and make ourselves over.--"Jack Burman: Book of the Dead," The Canadian National Post

Canadian photographer Jack Burman's new book--titled, simply, The Dead--is a breathtaking book. Gorgeously produced and sober, this quiet and lovely book is filled with Burman's large-scale photographs exploring the topic of death via a meditative documentation of a variety of human remains. Many of the 52 images which make up this book picture artifacts--from specimens to mummies to medical preparations--that will be familiar to aficionados of medical museums and ossuaries, but the quiet restraint and rich detail Burman achieves in his classically composed images elevate the book above the usual fare.

The book is published by The Magenta Foundation; you can find out more about it--and purchase the book in one of its three editions--by clicking here. You can also come pay the book a visit in the Morbid Anatomy Library where my copy resides atop the New Arrivals pile. You can read more about the book in the recent Canadian National Post article quoted above by clicking here.

This anatomical wax model shows the internal organs in a female torso and head, including the lungs, liver, stomach, kidneys and intestines. Complete with the veins and arteries, the heart is entirely removable. The figure was made by Francesco Calenzuoli (1796-1821), an Italian model maker renowned for his attention to detail. Wax models were used for teaching anatomy to medical students because they made it possible to pick out and emphasise specific features of the body, making their structure and function easier to understand. This made them especially useful at a time when few bodies were available for dissection. The model was donated by the Department of Human Anatomy at the University of Oxford.

Object number: 1988-249

Yet more (recent posts here: 1, 2, 3) riches from the London Science Museum's magnificently inexhaustable Brought to Life web exhibit. You can see much, much more by clicking here. Also, please click on images to see them in their full large-scale glory.

This Thursday August 5th at Observatory, Lord Whimsy, as part of his lecture "Nature as Miniaturist: An Illustrated Survey of the Bogs of Southern New Jersey" will be displaying the epic carnivorous plant-filled container bog seen above. Said bog is also, as it turns out, for sale; you can even take it home with you after Thursday's event if so inclined!

Full info follows, as found on Lord Whimsy's website; if you are interested, you can email Whimsy at email [at] lordwhimsy.com.

Mr. Bill Smith was kind enough to lend one of his container bogs (pictured above) for my Observatory talk this Thursday night in Brooklyn. He would like to inform you folks out in the netiverse that he is offering this three year-old bog garden for sale at the very reasonable price of $200--an excellent bargain, since purchasing these mature plants separately would cost considerably more.

The container is hollow resin, and can be left outside year-round without worry of cracking. The plants in the bog include: Purple Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea 'Jersey Girl'), Yellow Trumpet Pitcher (S. flava), Catesby's S. purpurea x S. flava hybrid pitcher plant (S. x Catesbei), Grass Pink Orchid (Calopogon tuberosus), 'Hamilton' dwarf cranberry, Spade leafed sundew (Drosera intermedia), and Thread leafed sundew (D. filiformis). A marvelous, mature grouping of classic North American bog plants, suitable for rooftop gardens and decks. No fertilizer necessary. Very low maintenance: just keep in full sun with regular waterings. Can be left outside year-round. All plants are cold hardy in zone 6b.

Interested parties may contact me (email [at] lordwhimsy.com) and claim their purchase after my lecture on Thursday evening.

Similar container bogs of all sizes can be had at Rarefind Nursery.

You can find out more about Lord Whimsy's presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Augustine included curiositas in his catalog of vices, identifying it as one of the three forms of lust (concupiscentia) that are the beginning of all sin (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and ambition of the world). The overly curious mind exhibits a “lust to find out and know,” not for any practical purpose but merely for the sake of knowing. Thanks to the “disease of curiosity” people go to watch freaks in circuses and charlatans in the piazzas. Augustine saw no essential difference between such perverse entertainments and the “empty longing and curiosity [that is] dignified by the names of learning and science.”

I just came across a nice meditation on the history of the debate of curiosity as value or vice on the website of Author William Eamon, author of Science and the Secrets of Nature and The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy:

The Disease Called Curiosity
Nowadays we think of curiosity as an emotion necessary for the advancement of knowledge, indeed as the well-spring of scientific discovery. It was not always so.

Saint Augustine, in the fourth century, stated the traditional medieval view of curiosity, and it wasn’t favorable. In the Confessions, the Bishop of Hippo made inquisitiveness in general the subject of a vicious polemic, thereby setting the tone for the debate over intellectual curiosity for centuries. Augustine included curiositas in his catalog of vices, identifying it as one of the three forms of lust (concupiscentia) that are the beginning of all sin (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and ambition of the world). The overly curious mind exhibits a “lust to find out and know,” not for any practical purpose but merely for the sake of knowing. Thanks to the “disease of curiosity” people go to watch freaks in circuses and charlatans in the piazzas. Augustine saw no essential difference between such perverse entertainments and the “empty longing and curiosity [that is] dignified by the names of learning and science.”

No difference between gawking at freaks in a sideshow and making investigations in natural philosophy? That’s what the saint said: “From the same motive,” Augustine wrote, “men proceed to investigate the workings of nature, which is beyond our ken—things which it does no good to know and which men only want to know for the sake of knowing.” Augustine’s severe judgment of intellectual curiosity, linking it with the sin of pride, the black arts, and the Fall, became conventional in medieval thought. In the Renaissance, it gave rise to such memorable characters as Doctor Faustus, who bartered his soul to the devil to satisfy his insatiable curiosity and quest for power.

Yet gawking curiosity was the perpetuum mobile of Renaissance science. Early modern curiosity was insatiable, never content with a single experience or object. Whereas Augustine linked curiosity to sensual lust and human depravity, Renaissance natural philosophers saw it as being driven by wonder and the engine of discovery...

...Venice’s maritime empire and its rich craft tradition provided plentiful fuel for wonder and curiosity. The continual contact with exotic commodities, whether herbs from the New World, mechanical toys from Persia, or fake dragons and basilisks, fueled Renaissance curiosity. All that evoked curiosity and wonder became prized objects for collectors, who displayed rare and exotic natural and artifical objects in curiosity cabinets, like peacocks proudly displaying their colorful feathers—indeed, peacock feather, too, were prized objects for collectors.

Pharmacies displayed the curiosities of Renaissance culture. The cabinet of pharmacist Francesco Calzolari at Verona, pictured here, displayed dried herbs, minerals, preserved animals, birds and snakes, including a supposed unicorn horn.

Such objects would become the “curious” things of early modern science. Saint Paul’s admonition, Noli alta sapere, “Do not seek to know high things,” gave way in the Renaissance to Horace’s more hopeful Sapere aude, “Dare to know.”

The transformation of curiosity in the Renaissance was a precondition of modernity. Without curiosity, there can be no scientific discovery, and without discovery, there can be no new knowledge.

You can read this piece in its entirety--and find out more about William Eamon and his work-- by clicking here.

Image caption: Pharmacies displayed the curiosities of Renaissance culture. The cabinet of pharmacist Francesco Calzolari at Verona, pictured here, displayed dried herbs, minerals, preserved animals, birds and snakes, including a supposed unicorn horn.

They’re all around us…in our homes, in our places of work, in our backyards, and in the air…what are we talking about? Insects. On this week's Cityscape, we're exploring the world of bugs. We'll talk with the author of a new book called Insectopedia, visit a Manhattan eatery that serves grasshoppers (and eat them too), talk with a Brooklyn artist who dabbles in insect photography and meet a pair of professional "insect-pinners" in SoHo.

The recent Cityscapes radio show "Bugging Out" plumbs the fascinating world of insects, as described above; one segment--that about the "Brooklyn artist who dabbles in insect photography"--features an interview with me about my insect photographs as shown in the recent Entomologia exhibition at Observatory.

You can give the show--which is interesting from start to finish!-- a listen by clicking here. You can find out more by clicking here. All images are mine, from Observatory's recent Entomologia exhibition; you can find out more about the show, which was brilliantly curated by Michelle Enemark, by clicking here. More about the book Insectopedia by clicking here.

Please note: The photographs you see above from the Entomologia exhibition are still available for sale; if interested, please contact me.

This Thursday and Friday at Observatory! Lord Whimsy on the curious flora of the bogs of Southern New Jersey--with live specimens and a book signing!--and Amy Herzog on the pornographic peepshows of Times Square as illuminated by Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. Hope to see you at one of both of these great events!

Full details follow:

Nature as Miniaturist: An Illustrated Survey of the Bogs of Southern New Jersey An Illustrated lecture and specimen demonstration with author, artist, and Gentleman Naturalist Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy
Date: Thursday, August 5th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Copies of Whimsy's book The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One will be available for sale and signing

Tonight, author, artist and Gentleman Naturalist Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy will be giving an illustrated lecture on the botanical oddities found in the ancient, Ice Age bogs of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. These tiny, alien worlds are home to rare orchids, carnivorous plants, and bizarre species of plants and animals–some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Whimsy, a lifelong resident of the Pine Barrens, will also give a demonstration of how to build and maintain your own container garden for these strange, wonderful plants. Live specimens of these plants will be on display, and care sheets for carnivorous plants like Venus Flytrap will also be made available. Whimsy’s book The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One will also be available for sale and signing.

Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy (aka V. Allen Crawford III) is an artist, designer, author, failed dandy, bushwhacking aesthete, and middle-aged dilettante. Whimsy is the author of The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One (Bloomsbury), which has been optioned for film by Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil. He and his wife are proprietors of Plankton Art Co., an illustration and design studio. Their most notable project to date is the collection of 400 species identification illustrations that are on permanent display at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Ocean Life.


Photo courtesy Bruce Hamilton

The Pornographic Arcades Project: Adaptation, Automation, and the Evolution of Times Square (1965-1975) An Illustrated lecture with Amy Herzog, professor of media studies and film studies program coordinator at Queens College, CUNY
Date: Friday, August 6
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Walter Benjamin, in his fragmentary Das Passagen-Werk, illuminated the resonances between urban architectural structures and the phenomena that define a cultural moment. “The Pornographic Arcades Project” is a work-in-progress, seeking to build on Benjamin’s insight to ask what a study of pornographic peep show arcades might reveal about the cultural imaginary of the late twentieth century.

Motion picture “peeping” machines have existed since the birth of cinema, and were often stocked with salacious titles. Public arcades devoted to pornographic peep booths only began to appear in the late 1960s, however, although once established, they proliferated wildly, becoming ubiquitous features in urban landscapes. Outfitted with recycled technologies, peep arcades were distinctly local enterprises that creatively exploited regional zoning and censorship laws. They became sites for diverse social traffic, and emerged as particularly significant venues for gay men, hustlers, prostitutes, and other marginalized groups. The film loops themselves often engage in a strange inversion of public and private, as “intimate interiors” are offered up to viewers, at the same time that the spectators are called out by the interface of the machines, and by the physical structures of the arcades.

Peep arcades set in motion a complex dynamic, one that sheds light on wider contemporary preoccupations: surveillance videography and social control; commodification, fetishization, and sexual politics; debates regarding vice and access to the public sphere. Less obvious are they ways in which the arcades subvert far older fascinations, such as technologies of anatomical display and the aesthetics of tableaux vivants.

Amy Herzog is associate professor of media studies and coordinator of the film studies program at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film (Minnesota, 2010). She recently curated an exhibition at The James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center on the dialogue between pornographic peep loops and contemporary art practices; you can find out more about that exhibition, entitled “Peeps”, by clicking here.

You can find out more about thes presentation here and here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Images © Robert Heggestad 2009 – All Rights Reserved

I just stumbled upon a wonderful collection of photographs documenting specimens from the natural history cabinet of naturalist explorer Alfred Russel Wallace; this incredible cabinet was famously discovered in 1979 at an Arlington Virgina-based antique store by Robert Heggestad. Heggestad--who took the photos you see above and who still owns the cabinet--purchased this amazing cabinet, seen by some to be a national treasure, for a mere $600.

Alfred Russel Wallace, The cabinet's creator, is famous for having come up with a theory of natural selection concurrently with his associate Charles Darwin; a letter he wrote to Darwin detailing his theory--which came to him in a fever dream, as explored compellingly by artist Mark Dion in the piece "The Delirium of Alfred Russel Wallace"-- famously led Darwin to overcome his qualms and publish his own work. The following excerpted text and images above are all from the blog Quigley's Cabinet:

“As you can imagine,” Heggestad writes, “after spending the past three years learning about his multifaceted life, I have become a great Wallace fan.” He notes that the cabinet is no longer on exhibit, but is still at the American Museum of Natural History cared for by Dr. David Grimaldi, Curator of Diptera, Fossil Insects & Lepidoptera, who will publish a paper on the historical and scientific significance of the collection. “I think this is a fabulous thing…a national treasure, actually,” says Dr. Grimaldi.

The collection contains some 1679 specimens in 26 glass-topped drawers that were originally hermetically sealed. “Of dragon-flies, I have many pretty species…” Wallace wrote in a letter from Singapore in 1854, and indeed the cabinet contains 36 dragon and caddis flies (1st image). The drawers in which the 398 butterflies and 294 moths were pinned had been built with a compartment along the front filled with camphor crystals, used to prevent damage to insect collections by other small insects. Wallace’s butterfly specimens include a “cracker” butterfly (Papilio amphinome, 2nd image), native to South America and named for the unusual sound the males produce as part of their territorial displays; a brush-footed butterfly collected in Brazil and commonly known as an “88” because of the pattern on its wings. The moths include a blue underwing, named for the bright hindwings hidden beneath dull forewings, and 2 species of sphinx moth, known for their quick and sustained flying ability, for which they are often mistaken for hummingbirds. Of the sphinx moth, Wallace wrote, “this moth, shortly after its immergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult task which requires such unerring aim.”

Among the 396 shells (3rd image) and stones and 86 pods and botanical specimens (4th image) is the fruit of a large leguminous tree of Brazil, the pulpy center of which is pulpy and edible. But perhaps the most intriguing specimen is the skin of an African sun bird (5th image), an Old World bird also reminiscent of hummingbirds because of the iridescent coloration of the males.

The collection also includes a British butterfly that is now extinct, fireflies and bedbugs captured by Wallace when he was 11 years old, and glasswing butterflies. The cabinet includes 2 specimens of the death’s-head moth featured in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Wallace gathered insects with “protective resemblances” - beetles that look like dewdrops, and moths that look like leaves, sticks, and bird droppings – and insects that mimic each other. He had many examples of protective coloration. He collected multiples of a single species to show individual variation. Wallace believed “that a superior intelligence, acting nevertheless through natural and universal laws, has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose” - a more theistic view than Darwin, and the equivalent of today’s theory of “intelligent design.”

You can read this story in its entirety and see the full image collection (from which the above were excerpted) by clicking here. You can read more about the discovery of the cabinet by Mr. Heggestad by clicking here. To find out more about Alfred Russel Wallace, click here. To find out more about Mark Dion's artpiece, click here.

This Friday night, Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory a night of arcane media and Victorian projection! Join collector and film-maker Ronni Thomas as he displays his collection of Diableries slides--masterfully designed 3d stereo 'tissues' created in france in the 19th Century depicting the daily life of Satan and his cohorts; see above--coupled with an illustrated lecture about the history of these fantastic artifacts and their kin. Come early and stay late to enjoy the phonograph stylings of DJ Davin Kuntze. Guests are also invited to bring their own arcane media and viewers!

Full details follow; Hope very very much to see you there!

Diableries, Medical Oddities and Ghosts in Amazing Victorian 3D!
An illustrated lecture and artifact display by filmmaker and collector Ronni Thomas
Date: Friday, July 30th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Tonight, join Observatory for a night of unique 3D stereo-views from the 1800s featuring HAUNTING double exposure ghost images, DISTURBING medical anomalies and the ever ELUSIVE french Diableries (or devil tissues)!

3D is very much in the news these days, and while hollywood has finally come close to perfecting this technology for the silver screen, people are largely unaware that the Victorians were also aficionados of 3D technologies, and that this interest often took a turn towards the macabre. Tonight, filmmaker and collector Ronni Thomas will lecture on the history of macabre 3D spectacles of the Victorian age, especially the infamous Diableries series–masterfully designed 3D stereo ’tissues’ created in france in the 19th century, backlit and featuring ornate scenes depicting the daily life of Satan in Hell (see image to left for example). Tongue in cheek and often controversial, these macabre spectacles give us a very interesting look at the 19th century’s lighthearted obsession with death and the macabre, serving as a wonderful demonstration of the Victorian fascination with themes such as the afterlife, heaven, hell and death.

In addition to the lecture, Thomas will display original Diablaries and other artifacts from his own collection. Guests are encouraged to bring their own pieces and, better yet, a stereo-viewer.

You can find out more about this presentation here. You can find out more about the Diablaries by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: Found on the wonderful pre-cinema resource Early Visual Media; Caption: An Image from the Diableries series--masterfully designed 3d stereo 'tissues' created in france in the 19th Century.

Above are some wonderful anatomical images from the exhibition "Lewd and Scandalous Books," on view at Monash University library in Melbourne, Australia until September 30th. I especially love the top image, which brings to mind the Anatomical Venus trope.

You can visit the virtual exhibition--from which these images are drawn--by clicking here.

Images top to bottom:

1. Beach, W. (Wooster), 1794-1868. An improved system of midwifery, adapted to the reformed practice of medicine: illustrated by numerous plates … / / by W. Beach (Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys & Co., 1859).
2. Mauriceau, François, 1637–1709. Traité des maladies des femmes grosses … / Par François Mauriceau. 6th ed. (Paris: Par la Compagnie des Libraires, 1721–28)
3. Crooke, Helkiah, 1576–1635. Mikrokosmographia: A description of the body of man … / By Helkiah Crooke … 2nd ed. (London: Printed for Thomas and Richard Cotes, and are to be sold by Michael Sparke, 1631).

Found via Book Tryst.

Now a particularly enduring Catholic practice is on prominent display in, of all places, Florence’s history of science museum, recently renovated and renamed to honor Galileo: Modern-day supporters of the famous heretic are exhibiting newly recovered bits of his body — three fingers and a gnarly molar sliced from his corpse nearly a century after he died — as if they were the relics of an actual saint.

“He’s a secular saint, and relics are an important symbol of his fight for freedom of thought,” said Paolo Galluzzi, the director of the Galileo Museum, which put the tooth, thumb and index finger on view last month, uniting them with another of the scientist’s digits already in its collection.

“He’s a hero and martyr to science,” he added.

The above image--of Galileo Galileo's preserved finger in its reliquary as now on display in Florence’s history of science museum--and text are drawn from an article that ran in today New York Times. You can read the article--which traces the history of Galileo as well as his preserved fingers and other assorted remains--in its entirety by clicking here.

Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory Tonight (!!!), July 20th. Hope to see you there!

Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo
An Illustrated lecture with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Tuesday July 20th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In 1891, Samuel F. O’Reilly of New York, NY patented the first “…electromotor tattooing-machine,” a modern and innovative device that permanently inserted ink into the human skin. O’Reilly’s invention revolutionized tattooing and forever altered the underlying concept behind a human tattoo, i.e., the writing of history on the body. Tattooing of the body most certainly predates the O’Reilly machine (by several centuries) but one kind of human experience remains constant in this history: the memorial tattoo.

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her own body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

Human tattoos have been described over the centuries as speaking scars and/or the true writing of savages; cut from the body and then collected by Victorian era gentlemen. These intricately inked pieces of skin have been pressed between glass and then hidden away in museum collections, waiting to be re-discovered by the morbidly curious. The history of tattooing is the story of Homo sapiens’ self-invention and unavoidable ends.

Tattoo artists have a popular saying within their profession: Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer.

And so too, I will add, does death

Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in spring 2011.

You can find out more about this presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

This just in! Tia, proprietor of the wonderful Case of Curiosities website, is selling off a variety of curiosities from her incredible personal collection (as seen above) today, tomorrow and Sunday in San Fransisco, California. I have seen this woman's collection and, I promise you, it will have your mind reeling in wonder and delight. If I lived in California, I would be there in a flash!

Full details follow:

You can find out more by visiting A Case of Curiosities by clicking here. Thanks, Ronni, for the photos and the reportage!

Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory next Tuesday, July 20th. Hope to see you there!

Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo
An Illustrated lecture with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Tuesday July 20th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In 1891, Samuel F. O’Reilly of New York, NY patented the first “…electromotor tattooing-machine,” a modern and innovative device that permanently inserted ink into the human skin. O’Reilly’s invention revolutionized tattooing and forever altered the underlying concept behind a human tattoo, i.e., the writing of history on the body. Tattooing of the body most certainly predates the O’Reilly machine (by several centuries) but one kind of human experience remains constant in this history: the memorial tattoo.

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her own body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

Human tattoos have been described over the centuries as speaking scars and/or the true writing of savages; cut from the body and then collected by Victorian era gentlemen. These intricately inked pieces of skin have been pressed between glass and then hidden away in museum collections, waiting to be re-discovered by the morbidly curious. The history of tattooing is the story of Homo sapiens’ self-invention and unavoidable ends.

Tattoo artists have a popular saying within their profession: Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer.

And so too, I will add, does death

Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in spring 2011.

You can find out more about this presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

"Betty Boop's Snow White" (1933) is undoubtedly Fleischer's masterpiece as lapse, particularily its final sequence in an underworld--both an Orphean journey (i.e. the myth of Orpheus), and an Orphic journey (a silly dance of death set to music.)...the evil queen turns Koko the Clown into a shapeshifting ghost, while her mirror keeps sprouting hands; and a blackface to tell her who is the fairest of them all. At the same time, Koko as ghost is rotoscoped from a clip of Cab Calloway...

Koko sings "St. James Infirmary," while turning into a twenty dollar gold piece, then into a "shot of that of booze." At the same time,. to illustrate the line of "crap shootin' pallbearers," the walls behind him is lined with murals of skulls and cows together, gambling. That bears scrutiny, usually requires a few viewings: it is intentionally traced like the wall of a Coney Island Mystery Cave Ride. It is also traced out of a collective imaginary (at least the collective of animators). The skulls of African Americans reenact the greasy underworld of back-alley saloon life and in Harlem. But not Harlem as blacks knew it--this is Harlem as the white male Fleischer animators saw it....
--The Vatican to Vegas: A History of Special Effects, Norman Klein, 2004

You can find out more about this wonderful book--which contains countless gems such as this--by clicking here. Thanks to my good friend Ben for introducing me to this book, which has been captivating me for the past few weeks.

I just stumbled upon a pretty incredible "photo story" documenting a collection of tattoos found in the Department of Forensic Medicine at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. The images above are all drawn from the photo essay; below is an excerpt from the very interesting article which accompanies the images:

Preserving the Criminal Code
Photo Stories
Katarzyna Mirczak

The tattoo collection at the Department of Forensic Medicine at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland consists of 60 objects preserved in formaldehyde, a method devised by one of the experts employed by the Department at the turn of 20th century.

The tattoos were collected from the prisoners of the nearby state penitentiary on Montelupich Street as well as from the deceased on whom autopsies were performed.

The majority of the prison tattoos represent connections between the convicts. Besides gestures and mimics it is a kind of secret code – revealing why 'informative' tattoos appeared on uncovered body parts: face, neck or arms.

The collection was created with a view to deciphering the code – among prisoners known as a 'pattern language'. By looking closely at the prisoners' tattoos, their traits, temper, past, place of residence or the criminal group in which they were involved could be determined.

In Poland, tattoos are common among criminals. Traditionally, they could be found on people who exhibited a tendency towards perverse behaviour: such as burglars, thieves, rapists and pimps. It was noticed that a significant percentage of tattooed people showed signs of personality disorders and aggressive behaviour. In the 1960s in Poland, getting a prison tattoo required special skills and criminal ambition – it was a kind of ennoblement, each tattoo in the criminal world was meaningful...

The entire photo story, with the full article and image collection (highly recommended!), can be found by clicking here; text and images by Katarzyna Mirczak as published on the Foto8 website.

PS: If you are interested in this topic, then you certainly won't want to miss our upcoming Observatory lecture "Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo" with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath next Tuesday, July 20th. More on that event here.

On Thursday, August 5th, please join Morbid Anatomy in welcoming good friend and fellow traveler Lord Whimsy at Observatory as he delivers an illustrated lecture on "the botanical oddities found in the ancient Ice Age bogs of the New Jersey Pine Barrens."

Whimsy will augment his lecture with the display of a variety of live plant specimens illustrating the diversity of this region, a demonstration on building and and maintaining your own container gardens, and plant care sheets to guide you in cultivating a variety of indigenous carnivorous plants. Copies of his book, The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One will also be available for sale and signing.

Herr Whimsy is a wonderful speaker and a fascinating thinker. I promise, this is one event you won't want to miss! Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Nature as Miniaturist: An Illustrated Survey of the Bogs of Southern New Jersey
An Illustrated lecture and specimen demonstration with author, artist, and Gentleman Naturalist Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy
Date: Thursday, August 5th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5 Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Tonight, author, artist and Gentleman Naturalist Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy will be giving an illustrated lecture on the botanical oddities found in the ancient, Ice Age bogs of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. These tiny, alien worlds are home to rare orchids, carnivorous plants, and bizarre species of plants and animals–some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Whimsy, a lifelong resident of the Pine Barrens, will also give a demonstration of how to build and maintain your own container garden for these strange, wonderful plants. Live specimens of these plants will be on display, and care sheets for carnivorous plants like Venus Flytrap will also be made available. Whimsy’s book The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One will also be available for sale and signing.

Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy (aka V. Allen Crawford III) is an artist, designer, author, failed dandy, bushwhacking aesthete, and middle-aged dilettante. Whimsy is the author of The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One (Bloomsbury), which has been optioned for film by Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil. He and his wife are proprietors of Plankton Art Co., an illustration and design studio. Their most notable project to date is the collection of 400 species identification illustrations that are on permanent display at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Ocean Life.

You can find out more about this presentation here. You can visit Lord Whimsy's website by clicking here, and find out more about his book by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

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Video: The Gallery of Creation Adventure of Lion & Lamb
Watch robotic animals discuss the creation of the world from a biblical prospective. Found here.

Regular Morbid Anatomy readers might recall a recent blog post about the a Georgia-based creationist natural history (sic) museum--"The Gallery of Creation, a Museum of Natural History"--being disseminated at public auction. Morbid Anatomy reader Sarah of the blog A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences was curious to know the outcome of that auction; Following is her exclusive investigative report, for your reading pleasure:

While the contemporary art market has struggled over recent months in terms of desirable material entering the market, the antiques market has been blessed. In particular, the genres of natural history, taxidermy and, surprisingly, kitsch have been a virtual goldmine in recent weeks, which have been bolstered even further by interesting provenances as well.

The Australian sale of the Owsten Collection (see report here) sold extremely well, with numerous pieces of highly significant natural history selling well above high estimates. I was particularly in love with the collector’s cabinets, myself.

Another captivating sale which I heard of, via Morbid Anatomy (thank you), was the de-accessioning of the collection of "The Gallery of Creation, A Museum of Natural History" on June 25th and 26th in Social Circle, Georgia (more on that here).

This Creationist natural history museum was founded by William Hurt Studios and catered to church groups, school classes and family outings. I wish I had gotten a chance to see it before it closed.

I have to admit, my first reaction was one of sheer captivation. What a great combo, natural history and that special kind of kitsch which only seems to happen in the South. Maybe my family stopped at too many tourist destinations during my childhood, but I shamelessly confess to a love of this kind of nostalgia. I envisioned lots of big blonde hair waving paddles for--quite simply--one of the oddest assortment of items I have ever come across available for sale in one place.

This particular sale was one of those examples of the sometimes odd attractions collectors can have. It certainly wasn’t about the ‘finest’, or art--it was about the sometimes most determined aspect of our attractions --nostalgia --as well as an occasional appreciation for good old fashioned camp.

In following up to the sale, I found that many of the pieces did sell quite reasonably. Prices do not include buyer’s premiums.

Oil Painting on Canvas of the Ark
8’6” wide x 5’ high
$600

Model of a Velosoraptor
$425

Vitrine Display of Various Skeletons & Skulls
14 feet wide x 9 feet high x 4 feet deep
$4,250

Vitrine Display of Seascape with Animation Features
12 feet wide x 9 feet high x 4 feet deep
$2,600

Vitrine of Mounted Birds, including Peacock, Toucan,
numerous parrots (Sphinx Macaw) and others
13 feet wide x 9 feet high x 4 feet deep
$4,100

Large Animated Vitrine of Lion & Lamb Conversing
$3,750

Another upcoming auction item worthy of pangs of nostalgia, as well as camp, is none other than Trigger himself, the trusted companion of Roy Rogers to be sold on July 14th in New York. The dispersal of the Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum Collection is being handled entirely by Christies and will take place on July 14th and 15th; more on that here.

TRIGGER (1934-1965)
Estimated $100,000 - $200,000.
Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum Collection

Entertaining the masses so thoroughly for over two decades, Roy Rogers and Trigger were one of America's most recognizable duos, becoming instant classics in people's eyes, hearts and imaginations. Trigger also reached legendary status in his own right, and is undeniably one of the most memorable horses that ever lived. Trigger was apparently purchased for $2,500 back in the day.

Thanks so much, Sarah, for the excellent report. More information of the Museum of Creation can be found here. For backstory on the auction, click here. Click here to find out more about the Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum Collection auction. Click here to check out guest-poster Sarah's lovely blog A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.

This Friday! At Observatory! Live human dissection, lecture and Book Launch by The Hollow Earth Society; full details follow. Hope to see you there!

Suspicious Anatomy: Lecture, Live Human Dissection, and Book Launch The Hollow Earth Society presents SUSPICIOUS ANATOMY Workbook No. 15: The Human Cranius Lecture, Live Human Dissection and Book Launch Date: Friday, July 16th Time: 8:00 PM Admission: $5

"Not since Galen’s De Elementis has been set in ink a single compendium of medicological knowledge so extensive & practicably useful as SUSPICIOUS ANATOMY Workbook No. 15: The Human Cranius. Having intrinsic value to all persons—piratical, mysterious, upright, or otherwise—The Human Cranius is a PEERLESS GEM of uncanny truth. If you are a living human, you should make frequent, unabashed forays into this field guide to your hideous secondary body—the cranius, an organ-matrix & carnival of fangs which is trying to destroy you even as you read this sentence…"

From the genre-chainsawing minds of the Hollow Earth Society (Ethan Gould and Wythe Marschall) comes “the definitive guide to the horrifying world inside you”—finally available in lush, illustrated paperback!

In the tradition of John Hodgman, David Cronenberg, and H. P. Lovecraft, The Human Cranius explores an alternative anatomy at once mesmerizing and deeply unsettling. Gould and Marschall ask: What do we know about our own bodies? The answer: Very little…

In many ways, the art and human studies of modernity have given us the keys to our unconscious minds, but have left entirely to dry science (fixing plumbing, testing drugs) the workings of our bodies. What does it feel like to have guts? To face disease, age, mutation—in short, a self that is not only not whole but not even on its own side?

The SUSPICIOUS ANATOMY series seeks to address these physio–psychomological imbalances by producing, for your benefit, the entire unconscious of the body, the shadow-self, in words and elaborate images.

The official Human Cranius book launch features a lecture, medicological film snippets, and a live human dissection. Join us!

About the Hollow Earth Society: For over one hundred years, the Hollow Earth Society has probed the world’s most bizarre and pertinent mysteries via an ever-mutating set of handbooks, rogue histories, and practical manuals. The Society is currently led by Colonels Ethan Gould and Wythe Marschall.

Ethan Gould is a Brooklyn-based artist working in drawing, puppetry, writing, and video to exploit the moments when the formerly robust process of perceptual categorization snaps like the fragilest of dry twigs. A graduate of the University of Rochester, he helped to create several development programs at the American Folk Art Museum. His work has appeared in such disparate places as the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, The Assembly Theater Company, The Brooklyn Review, Pomp & Circumstance, and ABC’s Wife Swap.

Wythe Marschall is writer. A graduate of Bennington College and the MFA fiction program at Brooklyn College, where he teaches undergraduate literature, Wythe has published stories and essays in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. He is the senior editor of the Atlas Obscura and an editor of Pomp & Circumstance, as well as a frequent reader for Electric Literature. His thoughts on letters, postmodernity, and hip hop can be found on his website, chronolect.com.

You can find out more about these presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Tonight at Observatory! Hope to see you there!

Radical Detectives: Forensic Photography and the Aesthetics of Aftermath in Contemporary Art
An illustrated lecture by artist and former forensic photographer Luke Turner
Date: Tuesday, July 13
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Forensic autopsy, crime, and death scene photographs hold a strong fascination in culture. These specific types of photographs present to the viewer a mediated confrontation with horror. In the context of a courtroom, there is a presupposition that the scientific or analytic use value assigned to the photograph will function to shift the viewer’s position from voyeur to detached collector of facts relevant to the legal system. Yet neither position is stable, and the psyche must contend with a complexity of vision that exceeds either classification.

In this slide show, artist and former forensic photographer Luke Tuner will present images from the history of forensic photography, slides from cases that he has photographed, and documentation of modern and contemporary art works that engage the viewer in the reconstruction process. Some relevant concepts explored by artists are crime scene reconstruction in Pierre Huyghe’s “Third Memory”, entropy in the work of Robert Smithson, accumulation in Barry LeVa’s pieces, the logic of sensation in the painting of Francis Bacon, something about that guy that had himself shot in a gallery, and many more. He will also discuss the curatorial work of Ralph Rugoff, and Luc Sante who have both made important connections between art and the forensic image.

Thoughts by philosophers of the abject/scientific, such as Julia Kristeva, Georges Bataille, Paul Feyerabend, Paul Virilio, and others, will be brought into play with the visual presentation. We will explore strategies of resistance to an “official” culture that attempts to legitimize a fixed methodology for the interpretation of evidence. As we emerge from art and philosophical tangents, the lecture will conclude with an argument for why the characters of Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks and Laurent, the protagonist of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Erasers, personify two notions of the radical detective through their unconventional approaches to the interpretation of evidence.

Luke Turner is an artist / writer / gallery preparator, who previously worked for three years as a forensic photographer for various Medical Examiner and Coroner’s Offices. Luke has lectured at Glendale Community College in Los Angeles and at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He is the recent founder of the art blog Anti-EstablishmentIntellectualLOL!.

You can find out more about the presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: "Car accident" 1940 - Photograph by Weegee, found here.