Conserving

The results of this fantastic journey into the realm of the dead are timelessly beautiful pictures recall the works of the Old Master painters and reveal to us the wonder of life itself.

The resultant photos have such brilliance, luminosity and expressive power that that seem to breathe new life into the preserved specimens, some of which are as much as 300 years old… Just one year after the publication of their photos, Daniel and Geo Fuchs had already begun to enjoy tremendous success throughout Europe and in North America.

Death behind glass acquires a fascinating beauty.

The specimen survived in its glass container since 1750, wholly undamaged but also entirely overlooked by the general public. Not until artists Geo and Daniel Fuchs discovered the little corpse, photographed it and presented its photo at international art exhibitions did the specimen become visible to millions of people.

The gorgeous wonder of life after death. The photos are simultaneously eerie and fascinating.

And even though, in the 1980s, photographers such as Joel-Peter Witkin, Rudolf Schäfer and most recently Andres Serrano had already turned their attention to the fascination of death, there’s still something entirely different in the work of Daniel & Geo Fuchs. Not solely because their work is considerably more comprehensive. Irregardless of whether their subjects are animals or human beings, they create a certain aesthetic precisely because they make no changes in the specimens, neither before, during nor after the photo shooting. They preserve the attitude of respect for the individual and for death itself.

Their photos are like paintings. The lighting makes the objects seem to glow and float.

Everywhere they went, they were cordially received by conserved death, a chemically preserved menagerie kept within transparent glass coffins. These photos are shocking precisely because they’re so very good.

Even though everything that we’re seeing is already dead, the two authors seem to fly in the face of this undeniable fact and, through the intuitive correctness with which they illuminate their subjects, they make the specimens seem to come alive again… And it is also this remarkable, almost magical lighting that makes these photos worth looking at…It makes sense not only to look at the book, but also to view the exhibition. Whereas the book gives its reader the opportunity to be drawn under the spell of this fantastic journey time and time again, the original photos in the exhibition have a presence which is simultaneously impressive and impossible to overlook.

The aesthetic design and elaborate processing make this large-format art-photo book into a visual masterpiece.

In a bizarre way, these photos are an homage to the beauty and the miracle of life. A visual masterpiece.

The poetry of the ephemeral, captured in imagery. Daniel and Geo Fuchs have devoted themselves to a sensitive encounter between life and death. Ever since this lavishly illustrated volume was published by Munich’s Edition Reuss this spring, the two photographers have been jetting halfway around the world to show parts of their “Conserving” project at exhibitions.

Something peaceful emanates from these photos. Sometimes even an extreme tenderness. And then, an unspeakable morbidity.

Fascinating glimpses of death, a frightening theme about which people usually prefer not to speak. And yet: the shock is lacking. The photos are so aesthetic; and even after hundreds of years, the perfectly preserved human bodies seem so peaceful. They’ve lost nothing of their dignity.

A cult of the dead in formaldehyde: Daniel and Geo Fuchs have created breathtaking photos of people and animals…The colors are repeatedly striking. Von Hagens, with his plastic corpses, cannot achieve pastel hues like these. But this yellow and this green – they’re pure Hieronymus Bosch colors. So, it seems that messages do indeed arrive from the realm of those who have not experienced salvation.

Some corpses look so peaceful, they almost seem to be sleeping. Aesthetic photos. And yet: one cannot bear it for very long. Or one begins to think about one’s own death.

Even if the silvery eyes stare only with a broken gaze, the camera liberates the animal from its double captivity – in glass and in death – and manumits it into a sculptural life by making the container and the conserving fluid very nearly invisible.

The results are astonishing: the photographed bodies float weightlessly, as though they were beyond time and space.