Displaying human remains for the sake of science has recently become a taboo in a society obsessed with ethics and “cancel culture”. This has led the curators of renowned collections of morbid anatomy to hide from the public’s eyes their most aesthetically displeasing specimens, and sometimes, to even close entire museums, sending their catalog into storage units for an undetermined amount of time.
Stephen Bessac has been photographing the shelves of defunct museums of anatomy for the past ten years, archiving hundreds of incredible specimens of teratology and criminal anthropology that had only been displayed for a few visitors. Illustrated with more than 200 color photos taken in the Musée Testut-Latarjet, the Dupuytren collection and Thailand’s Siriraj and Congdon medical museums, Staring at Death – The Medical Atrocities
is a true testimony to the unsettling beauty of three-legged monsters, harlequin babies and anencephalic creatures drowned for eternity in formaldehyde.
The collector's edition of Staring at Death – The Medical Atrocities
comes with a hand-drawn doodle
done by artist and publisher Nico Claux.
