The Prospect of Immortality is a six-year study of the cryonics industry by UK photographer Murray Ballard.

About the project:

In 1962, Robert Ettinger published, The Prospect of Immortality, the book that gave birth to the idea of ‘cryonics’: the process of freezing a human body after death in the hope that scientific advances may one day bring it back to life.

Fifty years later, and over a period of six years (2006-2012), Murray Ballard has undertaken an extensive photographic investigation of the practice Ettinger inspired. The resulting book pays homage to Ettinger’s original, borrowing it’s title and reproducing extracts of text.

But Ballard’s book does not set out to be the definitive guide to cryonics, instead it traces his own journey through the tiny but dedicated international cryonics community. Beginning with the story that provoked his initial interest, which he happened across in the Guardian newspaper, about a French couple who had been preserved in a frozen state beneath their chateau in France, until their freezer broke down and their experiment came to an end. And going on to explore: ‘cryonicists’ training sessions in the English seaside town of Peacehaven; professional laboratories in Phoenix, Arizona and Detroit, Michigan; and the rudimentary facilities of an organisation recently founded in Russia, just outside Moscow.

Currently, there are approximately 200 ‘patients’ worldwide stored permanently in liquid nitrogen, with a further two thousand people signed up for cryonics after death.

Whilst members have often been ridiculed for their views, Ballard takes an objective stance, allowing the viewer to consider the ethics of the practice, and to decide whether members are caught up in a fantasy world or are actually furthering genuine scientific innovation. Alongside fascinating representations of the technical processes, Ballard sensitively portrays the people involved, offering a human dimension to his account of this 21st century attempt to conquer the age-old quest for immortality.

Letting Go by Eric Rieger, aka Hot Tea, is an interpretation of the sun made with 84 miles of yarn. 

Rieger on his project:

The sun brings life and also represents happiness, warmth and energy. When letting go of something or someone we truly love, sometimes it is okay to celebrate their lives along with mourning. This piece represents the warmth and love I have received from those I have had to let go of.

Love Letters by Jiang Zhi

Swarm by Alexander James

About the project:

The butterfly has wide significance through different cultures; as a symbol of love, regeneration, fortune, freedom, spirituality and death. Of particular interest to me is that Greek mythology links the butterfly to the souls of those who have passed away.

This series explores these subjects as they appear hyper-real and painterly as light from the waters own wave energy interacts with the scene. I breed these remarkable creatures myself, and through this process for me a strong dialogue becomes apparent. As if asking us to accept the changes in our lives as abiding as she does. The butterfly unquestioningly embraces the changes of both her body and environment. The epic transition that this delicate creature undergoes gives hope as it expends energy on a huge scale to make it happen. Imagine if you would, the whole of your life changing to such an extreme where you are unrecognizable at the end of the transformation offers great hope to me.

Exploring these themes through the introduction of water; acting as both nurturer and destroyer, it has the power to cleanse and reinvent, or to drown and disappear. Believing that drawing on water’s transient and destructive nature exposes the fragility of life, and the temporary nature of our existence.

This series for me acts as a reflection on life and mortality; it is fleeting, beautiful and ultimately tragic.

What is Death? is a series of posters by Andreas Leonidou. 

Images from Cliff Briggie’s photo series Meditations on Dying

Cecropia by Christian Schoeler Maldonado

About the project:

“Unless you clearly see that ugliness Which makes me beatiful, You cannot know that there is a certain Ugliness more beautiful than any beauty. -  Il Vertunno dell’ Arcimboldo Don Gregorio Camanini Milano, 1591.”

Inspired by the work of Arcimboldo in the 16th century, this project became an investigation on the relativeness of the beauty. Each photograph shows one individual leaf from the Cecropia tree after one month of it’s fall. They are naturally transformed into organic shapes and sometimes into weird faces and masks or even human figures. Captured in the way they were at the moment, but carefully positioned and lightened to better show it’s individual character.

Street artist ROA may have brought his art indoors for some recent gallery work, but that doesn’t mean he’s painting on ordinary canvas. 

This video shows his work in all its complexity of form and has the the added benefit of the artist’s commentary on his recent work which explores the subjects of urban animals and decay:

ROA - White Walls from Colin M Day on Vimeo.

ramirezdahmerbundy:

The Kaibo Zonshinzu anatomy scrolls, painted in 1819 by Kyoto-area physician Yasukazu Minagaki (1784-1825), consist of beautifully realistic, if not gruesome, depictions of scientific human dissection.