Cryopreservation Unit, Cryonics Institute, Clinton Township, Michigan
Taryn Simon American
For her series of photographs and subsequent book, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Simon gained extraordinary access to a wide variety of restricted sites throughout the United States, from the mission control center of a nuclear submarine to a research laboratory at Harvard Medical School where vials of live HIV are stored. Each photograph is accompanied by a detailed caption written by the artist, providing background information about the site and what goes on behind its closed doors. This picture shows the space-age-looking unit in which the wife and mother of the inventor of cryostasis-the preservation of the bodies of recently deceased people at very low temperatures-lie suspended between death and a hoped-for second life.
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