Unknown
[Cross-section of a Male Torso]

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Artist Unknown

Titles

[Cross-section of a Male Torso]

Datec. 1910

MediumCyanotype

DimensionsImage: 35 3/8 × 13 3/4 in. (89.9 × 34.9 cm)
Sheet: 35 3/8 × 13 3/4 in. (89.9 × 34.9 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Joan Morgenstern in honor of Dr. Gilbert Lechenger

Object number2014.681

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionSince its invention, photography has had a dual nature as both art and science, which have never been mutually exclusive. This cyanotype was part of a series in which cadavers were frozen and then thinly sliced by an anonymous physician, either from side to side or from front to back. In a process not fully understood, the slice was probably put on glass and contact printed to a negative. Then the negatives of the frozen segments were eventually printed on large cyanotype sheets, providing a life-size, accurate record of the position of organs and bones in that particular section. This image is of a slice toward the back half of a male body.
Provenance[Alex Novak, Chalfont, Pennsylvania]; [Daniel Wolf]; [L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York]; purchased by MFAH, 2014.
Exhibition History“Shadows on the Wall: Cameraless Photography from 1851 to Today” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, August 31– November 30, 2014.

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