Author: A few days ago I had the opportunity to visit an ordinary morgue. It would seem, what’s wrong with this? Well, the morgue, well, we’ll all be there. The point is that without being a mortuary employee or his comrade, “outsiders” have no special opportunity to inspect, much less photograph, all the premises. Relatives of the deceased visit only the farewell hall and a couple of other rooms ready to receive them, medical students visit the auditorium and sometimes the sectional room.
In the review below the cut, I suggest you familiarize yourself with how the true last journey occurs - the journey of the body from the moment of death to the moment the coffin with the body is handed over to relatives for further burial/sending to the crematorium. The review is illustrated, but is as ethical as possible. There is only one corpse in the photographs, and that one with a bag on his head.

It all starts with the fact that a person dies.
This can happen at home, or outside the home, or even in the hospital.
Death can be discovered immediately - by those around or close to you, or maybe after a different amount of time, which affects the form in which the corpse is delivered to the morgue.

They call for “suspicion of death” ambulance, with whom the police also arrive. The doctor pronounces death and the body is taken to the morgue.
If the death occurred in a hospital, the police do not seem to be needed.

1. And so, they bring him here...

2. A door with a sign “reception of bodies”, a forgotten gurney, and then immediately - coffins

5. The morgue consists of two floors and a basement. The first refrigeration chamber is turned off due to lack of need for it (the second one, in the basement, is enough)

6. Then there is a table on which the body is washed if necessary. Please note - the table is granite. According to the orderly, such tables (Russian, stone) are much more convenient than more modern iron (imported) ones - they do not rattle and are easier to clean. These are the tables that are used in the morgue, which appeared on the Internet some time ago with the label “Prison Morgue” (although in fact this is one of the Moscow morgues at the time of the influx of clients) - the remains of the photos can be found on Google.

7. Then the measurement takes place (height is measured to determine the size of the coffin: the coffin must be 20 cm longer than the body) and registration. Here the ambulance doctor hands over the body to the orderly and Required documents. At this moment, the person finally ceases to be a person, and instead of his full name, he is assigned a number, which is written on a tag and tied to his wrist (a more common option is to his toe).

8. The orderlies who work here in daily shifts and regularly touch all sorts of things are required to wash their hands frequently and wash themselves completely. For this purpose, the morgue is full of sinks, showers and changing rooms.

11. By the way, the morgue also has the Internet and Wi-Fi (in a hospital where patients are alive, this benefit is not provided)

12. The registry is needed more by relatives - after all, this is where the services provided by the morgue are processed, a death certificate is issued, etc.

13. A person can die suddenly or after a long illness. Having been observed by various doctors and having appropriate entries in their medical histories (medical records at the place of treatment), citizens, after being delivered to the morgue, are sent to the dressing room, where orderlies bring them into proper shape using simple cosmetics

16. The range of morgue services also includes the sale of coffins and accessories, organization of farewells, funeral services and the provision of funeral transport.

18. Coffins, wreaths, etc. are displayed in the sales hall

21. And also in the corridor of the first floor

23. And for some reason in the toilet

24. The coffin on the right is Muslim

25. The cat on the “roof” of the Muslim coffin is not included in the set. By the way, there are four cats here - a cat and three cats. They are kept to control the absence of rodents, which tend to eat bodies.

26. In addition to length (from 160 to 210), coffins differ in width. For obese citizens there is a standard coffin called a “deck”

For those who are completely non-standard, the option of making a coffin to order is possible.

27. If a person’s death was not so predictable, his body is sent for an autopsy. The autopsy takes place in rooms called “sectional rooms.” The sectional ones look like this (the explosive metal tables are right here)

30. Opening tools

31. Another sectional, with its own tools

34. Hard lining-pillow under the head - numerous marks from the tool

35. During the autopsy, the necessary samples, tests, samples are taken from the corpse

36. These samples are sent for research to laboratories located on the second floor

39. The duty officer's place is on the second floor

40. Forensic experts have not been here for a long time, all that is left of them is an empty room

41. But there are many laboratories

43. We look into several of them - a lot of equipment, understandable and not completely

46. ​​Next laboratory

49. Just a jungle

50. And one more lab

53. This unit is alive. It beeps and moves regularly, the lid rises, the drum with cans makes some movements

54. The archive is filled in real time

55. On the second floor there is also an archive, in a more familiar form

57. And this is what thin colored sections of organs look like, which are examined to determine the causes of death

59. Research Answers

60. There is also an auditorium where students come

62. Although there are only two floors and a basement, there is an elevator, because it is inconvenient to move up the stairs with a wheelchair. The elevator connects the first floor and the basement, and the second floor houses its engine room.

65. There is also a ventilation room

67. Rest room for orderlies

68. And the canteen where morgue workers have lunch

69. The morgue also has a roof - in good weather You can go there to hang out, set off fireworks, etc., but in winter there is knee-deep snow on it

70. Basement of the morgue. First of all, in the basement there is another sectional and the main refrigerator

72. A bag is put on the head of a corpse so that the face does not dry out

73. Three cats live in the basement (two in the frame, the third ran away ahead of time)

74. There is an unused hyperbaric chamber-on-wheels, where nurses go out to smoke

75. And old medical records of long-dead and buried citizens

76. Underground tunnels connecting all hospital buildings converge to the basement of the morgue

78. After all the procedures for autopsy, make-up, dressing, etc., traditionally on the third day the body in a coffin is given to relatives - from this veranda, where artificial flowers covered with snow stand forlornly

79. Well, what can I say in conclusion? Based on the results of my communication with the orderly working there, working there is not scary at all, interesting in places, but mostly mundane. And let's cross our fingers that you and your loved ones will not soon find yourself in this or a similar establishment

Thank you for attention! I hope it was interesting and not too disgusting.

At the beginning of the month, a local historian was arrested in Nizhny Novgorod, in whose apartment more than a dozen mummified corpses of girls aged 15 to 25 were found.

(Total 9 photos)

1. Small-sized three bedroom apartment with skeletons from which the detainee made life-size dolls was discovered by investigators shortly after the holidays.

2. As representatives of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Nizhny Novgorod reported, at night a man made his way to the cemetery and dug out corpses from the ground. After that, he put the remains in bags and dragged them to his home. The historian was traced after the police began investigating numerous cases of desecration of graves at two local cemeteries - Sormovsky and Sortirovochny.

3. As the police said, the historian developed his own technology for mummifying bodies, which he used to store the remains dug up in the cemetery. He dressed the mummified women in bright outfits and headdresses and seated them around the apartment like dolls.

4. Anatoly Moskvin invested musical mechanisms, plush hearts and fragments of tombstones into the skeletal bodies of girls.

5. Investigators believe that the purpose of stealing the remains was for collecting.

6. On this moment It is known about 29 mummified corpses of young girls, whom Anatoly Moskvin dug out of their graves and turned into elegant dolls. The bodies were dug up between a year and 15 years ago. In addition, two boxes of bones were taken from the scientist’s home, the age and identity of which remains to be determined by experts.

7. It is known that at one time the man completed his postgraduate studies at one of the leading universities with a degree in Celticology, and once taught. Until his arrest, Anatoly Moskvin worked as a local historian, gave lectures and conducted excursions in the Nizhny Novgorod library of the Leninsky district.

8. Previously, Moskvin became the hero of articles by Nizhny Novgorod journalist Tatyana Kokina-Slavina. She wrote that Moskvin specializes in the study of cemeteries (local historian and necropolisist). He managed to visit more than 750 cemeteries and began preparing a corresponding guidebook for publication. Kokina-Slavina noted that Moskvin is also a polyglot - he knows 13 languages.

9. Moskvin was charged under the article of the Criminal Code “Desecration of the bodies of the dead and their burial places.” In the near future, various examinations will be carried out, including forensic psychiatric examinations.

Zelichenko: Bishkek necrophile opened the graves of girls for 28 years

The famous publicist, retired police colonel Alexander Zelichenko, remembers hundreds of stories from the world of crime. He served in the criminal investigation department for many years, headed one of the internal affairs departments of the city of Frunze, led the investigative “sphere” in the Issyk-Kul region, the fight against drug trafficking in Kyrgyzstan and the Center for Reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

© Sputnik / Azamat Totubaev

Well-known publicist, retired police colonel Alexander Zelichenko

We met with Alexander Leonidovich for an interview, but the conversation turned out to be so interesting and large-scale that it was decided to divide it into several parts - today we will talk about the most resonant crimes committed on the territory of Kyrgyzstan at different times.

Let's start with the story of a necrophiliac from the city of Frunze, who for 28 years traveled through cemeteries, opened the graves of girls and satisfied his lust. The following story is told on behalf of Alexander Zelichenko himself.

The police were on their ears

The maniac receives sexual pleasure from the very act of crime and falls into nirvana. This is the main danger - in pursuit of a terrible buzz, he will “hunt” all his life.

The famous Frunze necrophile Mikhail Lukyanov was detained in 1995. The police searched for him for 28 long years. I just got a job in the criminal investigation department when he was at the peak of his “fame.” This man operated not only in the capital’s cemetery, but throughout the Chui Valley, even in Kazakhstan and Russia. Everywhere the police were on alert; a team of Moscow super-sleuths who specialized in necrophiliacs was brought into the case.

“When I had intercourse with a dead woman for the first time, I realized what I was missing,” Bishkek necrophile Lukyanov admitted to investigators

We literally spent the night in cemeteries back then. They set up ambushes so that they could observe the graveyards from afar, and sat with night vision devices. But he never got caught - never, anywhere.

The man tracked funeral processions with the bodies of girls, and when everyone left the cemetery, under the cover of darkness he opened the graves and did his job. He raped the corpses and threw them there, near the dug up graves. He left virtually no traces - we had no idea who we were looking for. For "sluggishness and inefficiency" stars and epaulets flew from the shoulders. But one day everything became clear...

Cemetery Dweller

He was detained in Kemin. When they told us, no one believed that this was the same necrophiliac.

He was 46 years old. Unprepossessing, frail, short... I talked to him personally. It was very interesting from a professional and human point of view how one could get to this point, and he told me everything. I remember that he himself smelled like a grave, and he spoke confusedly and in a hurry.

© Photo / Alexander Zelichenko

“I understand that there is some kind of evil inside me, but I can’t do anything about it. I was born this way,” Lukyanov said

When Mikhail was 10 years old, his father left the family. After a while, the mother brought her stepfather, who terrorized everyone in the household and beat them. One day the man got drunk and fell into a sound sleep. Mikhail found a heavy stone slab somewhere and brought it down on the sleeping man’s head. Before the murder, he smoked half a pack of cigarettes - he just couldn’t make up his mind...

He was sentenced to ten years in prison, but he served eight years and was released under an amnesty.

In the mid-1960s, Lukyanov suffered from meningitis, after which he developed an inexplicable craving for vagrancy. It wasn’t that the man had nothing to eat - he had excellent skills as a carpenter, plumber, and electrician, but he liked to wander through cemeteries and landfills. He worked part-time - in some places they fed him for it, in others they gave him a little money. He lived mainly in cemeteries, treating himself to what people left on the graves when they came to remember their relatives.

By the way, it turned out that Lukyanov had a wife. She periodically came to him, brought clothes and food...

"Having opened the grave, I realized what I was missing..."

From the testimony of a necrophiliac:

"I've never been different male power. Sometimes I succeeded with women, sometimes I didn’t. I was more often haunted by failures, so I avoided women - they laughed at me.

Once, when I was spending the night in a cemetery, I saw a fresh grave. I read that a girl was buried in it, but a long time ago - 3-4 months ago. And then suddenly I felt such a surge of male power... just something impossible. I rushed to the grave and, like a dog, began to dig the ground. When I got to the coffin, ejaculation occurred - then I realized: this is what I was missing so much.

Since then he began to roam throughout the region. I understood that they would be looking for me, but I continued to do this."

God's punishment

One night Lukyanov came to the cemetery in Kemin, saw the girl’s fresh grave and began to dig. He had simple equipment with him - a shovel and a rake. When the necrophiliac had already reached the coffin and opened it, a heavy downpour began. He tried to get out, but couldn’t - the ground was slippery and clay was flowing around him. And then a tombstone collapsed on Mikhail. He himself later said that it was some kind of sign from above.

The maniac lost consciousness right in the grave. In the morning, a cemetery watchman found him and immediately called the police.

"There's some kind of evil inside me"

During the conversation, Lukyanov gave the impression of a completely adequate person. He said: “Yes, I understand that there is some kind of evil in me, but what can I do if I was born this way?”

© Photo / Alexander Zelichenko

Mikhail Lukyanov violated the corpses of 48 girls and killed his stepfather

Science classifies necrophiliacs as mentally ill people, but he was found to be absolutely sane. Mikhail did not hide anything and told everything he remembered. The investigation lasted a very long time; the accused was taken under escort to Kazakhstan and Russia.

They didn’t forgive him in the zone

In the history of criminology, there has not been a single case of such monsters “getting involved” with crimes on their own. They are stopped either by prison, or illness, or death.

Lukyanov was tried in the Keminsky district. The investigation convicted him of 46 cases of desecration of graves, and the court sentenced him to 10 years in prison. He hanged himself in his cell: the zone had its own rules, and no one forgave his crimes... In my memory, Mikhail Lukyanov remained not a reasonable person, but some kind of alien.

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I will show you a selection of the most famous photographs recent years. There is a jump from the window of the World Trade Center on September 11, and the execution of Saddam Hussein, a photograph of a child in the womb when a surgeon performs an abortion on her, and much more.
Of course, you all saw these shots separately, but when they are collected in one post, the effect is gorgeous.
Welcome to history.
“The most famous photograph that no one has seen,” is what Associated Press photographer Richard Drew calls his photograph of one of the World Trade Center victims who jumped from a window to his death on September 11

“On that day, which, more than any other day in history, was captured on cameras and film,” Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, “the only taboo, by common consent, was the pictures of people jumping out of windows.” Five years later, Richard Drew's Falling Man remains a terrible artifact of the day that should have changed everything, but didn't.

Malcolm Brown, a 30-year-old photographer (Associated Press) from New York, called on the phone and asked to be at a certain intersection in Saigon the next morning, because... something very important is about to happen.

He came there with a reporter from the New York Times. Soon a car pulled up and several Buddhist monks got out. Among them is Thich Quang Duc, who sat in the lotus position with a box of matches in his hands, while the others began to pour gasoline on him. Thich Quang Duc struck a match and turned into a living torch. Unlike the crying crowd that saw him burn, he did not make a sound or move. Thich Quang Duc wrote a letter to the then head of the Vietnamese government asking him to stop the repression of Buddhists, stop detaining monks and give them the right to practice and spread their religion, but received no response.

Take a closer look at this photo. This is one of the most remarkable photographs ever taken. The baby's tiny hand reached out from the mother's womb to squeeze the surgeon's finger. By the way, the child is 21 weeks from conception, the age when he can still be legally aborted. The tiny hand in the photo belongs to a baby who was due on December 28 last year. The photo was taken during an operation in America.

The first reaction is to recoil in horror. It looks like a close-up of some terrible incident. And then you notice, in the very center of the photo, a tiny hand grasping the surgeon's finger.

The child is literally grasping for life. It is therefore one of the most remarkable photographs in medicine and a record of one of the most extraordinary operations in the world. It shows a 21-week-old fetus in the womb, just before spinal surgery was required to save the baby from serious brain damage. The operation was performed through a tiny incision in the wall of the uterus and this is the youngest patient. At this stage, the mother may choose to have an abortion.

The death of the Al-Dura boy, filmed by a French television station reporter as he is shot by Israeli soldiers while in the arms of his father.

The portrait of the "martyr" al-Dura was distributed in stamps, books, songs and posters. But Jewish activists in France, who have questioned the authenticity of the images, have waged a stubborn, years-long campaign to demand that French television also reveal parts of the footage that were not broadcast, excerpts showing Palestinians practicing to stage a shooting incident, resulting in which allegedly killed al-Dura.

By the early summer of 1994, Kevin Carter (1960-1994) was at the height of his fame. He had just won the Pulitzer Prize, and job offers from famous magazines were pouring in one after another. “Everyone congratulates me,” he wrote to his parents, “I can’t wait to meet you and show you my trophy. This is the highest recognition of my work, which I did not dare even dream of.”

Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph "Famine in Sudan," taken in the early spring of 1993. On this day, Carter specially flew to Sudan to film scenes of famine in a small village. Tired of photographing people who had died of hunger, he left the village into a field overgrown with small bushes and suddenly heard a quiet cry. Looking around, he saw a little girl lying on the ground, apparently dying of hunger. He wanted to take a photo of her, but suddenly a vulture landed a few steps away. Very carefully, trying not to spook the bird, Kevin chose the best position and took the photo. After that, he waited another twenty minutes, hoping that the bird would spread its wings and give him the opportunity to get a better shot. But the damned bird did not move and, in the end, he spat and drove it away. Meanwhile, the girl apparently gained strength and walked - or rather crawled - further. And Kevin sat down near the tree and cried. He suddenly had a terrible desire to hug his daughter...

A female settler resists an Israeli army officer, Amona outpost, West Bank, February 1, 2006.

Jewish settler confronts Israeli police as they enforce the decision Supreme Court on the dismantling of 9 houses at the outpost of the Amona settlement, West Bank, February 1. Residents, joined by thousands of other protesters, erected barbed wire barriers to protect their homes and clashed with police. More than 200 people were injured, including 80 police officers. After hours of confrontation, the settlers were driven from the site and bulldozers arrived and began demolition.

A 12-year-old Afghan girl is a famous photograph taken by Steve McCurry in a refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Soviet helicopters destroyed the village of a young refugee, her entire family was killed, and the girl traveled for two weeks in the mountains before getting to the camp. After its publication in June 1985, this photograph became a National Geographic icon. Since then, this image has been used everywhere - from tattoos to rugs, which turned the photograph into one of the most widely circulated photos in the world.

Stanley Forman/Boston Herald, USA. July 22, 1975, Boston. A girl and a woman fall while trying to escape a fire

"Unknown Rebel" in Tiananmen Square. This famous photo, taken by Associated Press photographer Jeff Widner, shows a protester who single-handedly held off a tank column for half an hour.

Poland - girl Teresa, who grew up in a concentration camp, draws a "house" on the board. 1948. © David Seymour

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (often referred to simply as 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide terrorist attacks that occurred in the United States of America. According to the official version, responsibility for these attacks lies with the Islamist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda.

On the morning of that day, nineteen terrorists allegedly associated with al-Qaeda, divided into four groups, hijacked four scheduled passenger airliners. Each group had at least one member who had completed basic flight training. The hijackers flew two of these airliners into the World Trade Center towers, American Airlines Flight 11 into WTC 1, and United Airlines Flight 175 into WTC 2, causing both towers to collapse, causing severe damage to adjacent structures.

Niagara Falls is frozen. Photo of 1911

Mike Wells, UK. April 1980. Karamoja region, Uganda. Hungry boy and missionary.

White and Colored, photograph by Elliott Erwitt, 1950

Spencer Platt, USA (Spencer Platt), Getty Images
Young Lebanese drive through a devastated area of ​​Beirut, August 15, 2006.


Young Lebanese men drive down a street in Haret Hreik in the bomb-prone suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, August 15. For nearly five weeks, Israel has attacked this part of the city and other cities in southern Lebanon in an operation against Hezbollah militants. After the truce declared on August 14, thousands of Lebanese began to gradually return to their homes. According to the Lebanese government, 15,000 homes and 900 businesses were damaged.

The photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head not only won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, but also changed the way Americans think about what happened in Vietnam.

Despite the obviousness of the image, in fact the photograph is not as clear as it seemed to ordinary Americans, filled with sympathy for the executed man. The fact is that the man in handcuffs is the captain of the Viet Cong "revenge warriors", and on this day many unarmed civilians were shot and killed by him and his henchmen. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, pictured left, was haunted his whole life by his past: he was refused treatment at an Australian military hospital, after moving to the US he faced a massive campaign calling for his immediate deportation, the restaurant he opened in Virginia every day was attacked by vandals. "We know who you are!" - this inscription haunted the army general all his life.

Lynching (1930) Lawrence Beitler

This photo was taken in 1930, when a mob of 10,000 whites hanged two black men for raping and murdering a white woman. young man. The mob "released" the criminals from prison to lynch them. A striking contrast - the joyful faces of people as a backdrop for the torn corpses.

At the end of April 2004, the CBS program 60 Minutes II aired a story about the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison by a group of American soldiers. The story featured photographs that were published in The New Yorker magazine a few days later. This became the biggest scandal surrounding the American presence in Iraq.

In early May 2004, the leadership of the US Armed Forces admitted that some of the methods of torture were not consistent with Geneva Convention and announced its readiness to publicly apologize.

According to the testimony of a number of prisoners, American soldiers raped them, rode them on horseback, and forced them to fish food out of prison toilets. In particular, the prisoners said: “They forced us to walk on all fours, like dogs, and yelp. We had to bark like dogs, and if you didn’t bark, you were hit in the face without any mercy. After that, they threw us in cells, took away our mattresses, spilled water on the floor and forced us to sleep in this slurry without removing the hoods from our heads. And they were constantly photographing it all,” “One American said he would rape me. He drew a woman on my back and forced me to stand in a shameful position, holding my own scrotum in my hands.”

Burial of an unknown child.

On December 3, 1984, the Indian city of Bhopal suffered from the largest man-made disaster in human history. A giant toxic cloud released into the atmosphere by an American pesticide plant covered the city, killing three thousand people that same night, and another 15 thousand in the next month. In total, more than 150,000 people were affected by the release of toxic waste, and this does not include children born after 1984.

Nilsson gained international fame in 1965 when LIFE magazine published 16 pages of photographs of a human embryo.

These photographs were also immediately reproduced in Stern, Paris Match, The Sunday Times and other magazines. The same year, A Child is Born, a book of Nilsson's photographs, was published, the eight-millionth edition of which was sold out in the first few days. This book went through several reprints and still remains one of the most successfully sold illustrated books in the history of this kind of albums. Nilsson managed to obtain photographs of the human embryo back in 1957, but they were not yet impressive enough to be shown to the general public.

Photo of the Loch Ness monster. Ian Wetherell 1934

The photo was taken on September 29, 1932 on the 69th floor in recent months construction of Rockefeller Center

Surgeon Jay Vacanti of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston is working with microengineer Jeffrey Borenstein to develop a technique for growing an artificial liver. In 1997, he managed to grow a human ear on the back of a mouse using cartilage cells.

The development of technology that allows culturing the liver is extremely important. In the UK alone there are 100 people on the transplant waiting list, and according to the British Liver Trust, most patients die before receiving a transplant.

Freezing rain... It sounds harmless enough, but nature often throws up unpleasant surprises.

Freezing rain can form a thick layer of ice on any object, even destroying giant power poles. And they can create incredibly beautiful objects of art of natural origin.
The photo shows the consequences of freezing rain in Switzerland.

A man tries to alleviate the difficult conditions for his son in a prison for prisoners of war.
Jean-Marc Bouju/AP, France.
March 31, 2003. An Najaf, Iraq.

Dolly is a female sheep, the first mammal successfully cloned from the cell of another adult creature.

The experiment was carried out in the UK (Roslin Institute, Midlothian, Scotland), where she was born on July 5, 1996. The press announced her birth only 7 months later - on February 22, 1997. After living for 6 years, Dolly the sheep died on February 14, 2003.

Patterson-Gimlin's 1967 documentary film of a female Bigfoot, the American " Bigfoot“, is still the only clear photographic evidence of the existence on earth of living relict hominids, designated in hominology by the term “homins”.

At the same time, there is a fair amount of fuzzy, blurry images that are not suitable for scientific analysis. This is a testament to how difficult these primates are to photograph. As a rule, meetings with them occur at dusk and unexpectedly, so that the shocked eyewitness at the most crucial moment usually forgets not only that he has a photo or video camera, but even a weapon.

Republican soldier Federico Borel García is depicted facing death.

The photo caused a huge shock in society. The situation is absolutely unique. During the entire attack, the photographer took only one photo, and he took it at random, without looking through the viewfinder, he did not look towards the “model” at all. And this is one of the best, one of his most famous photographs. It was thanks to this photograph that already in 1938 newspapers called 25-year-old Robert Capa “The Greatest War Photographer in the World.”

The photograph taken by reporter Alberto Korda at a rally in 1960, in which Che Guevara is also visible between a palm tree and someone's nose, claims to be the most circulated photograph in the history of photography.

The photograph showing the hoisting of the Victory Banner over the Reichstag spread throughout the world. Evgeny Khaldey, 1945.

Death of a Nazi functionary and his family.

Vienna, 1945 Yevgeny Khaldei: “I went to the park near the parliament building to film the passing columns of soldiers. And I saw this picture. On the bench sat a woman, killed with two shots - in the head and neck, next to her were a dead teenager of about fifteen and a girl. A little further away lay the corpse of the father of the family. He had a gold NSDAP badge on his lapel, and a revolver lay nearby. (...) A watchman from the parliament building ran up:
- He did it, not Russian soldiers. Came at 6 am. I saw him and his family from the basement window. Not a soul on the street. He moved the benches together, ordered the woman to sit down, and ordered the children to do the same. I didn't understand what he was going to do. And then he shot the mother and son. The girl resisted, then he laid her on a bench and also shot her. He stepped aside, looked at the result and shot himself.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995), a photographer working for Life magazine, walked around the square photographing people kissing. He later recalled that he noticed a sailor who “rushed around the square and kissed indiscriminately all the women in a row: young and old, fat and thin. I watched, but there was no desire to take a photo. Suddenly he grabbed something white. I barely had time to raise the camera and take a photo of him kissing the nurse.”

For millions of Americans, this photograph, which Eisenstadt called “Unconditional Surrender,” became a symbol of the end of World War II.

The assassination of the thirty-fifth President of the United States, John Kennedy, took place on Friday, November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas at 12:30 local time. Kennedy was fatally wounded by a gunshot as he and his wife Jacqueline rode in the presidential motorcade along Elm Street.

On December 30, ex-president Saddam Hussein was executed in Iraq. The Supreme Court has sentenced the former Iraqi leader to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out at 6 a.m. in a suburb of Baghdad.

The execution took place shortly before morning prayers, marking the beginning of the Muslim festival of sacrifice. She was filmed and now national Iraqi television is broadcasting this recording on all channels.

Representatives of the Iraqi authorities who were present reported that Hussein behaved with dignity and did not ask for mercy. He stated that he was "glad to accept death from his enemies and become a martyr" rather than vegetate in prison for the rest of his days.

American soldiers drag the body of a Viet Cong (South Vietnamese rebel) soldier on a leash.
Kyoichi Sawada/United Press International, Japan.
February 24, 1966, Tan Binh, southern Vietnam.

A young boy looks out of a bus loaded with refugees who fled the epicenter of the war between Chechen separatists and Russians, near Shali, Chechnya. The bus returns to Grozny.
Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post, USA.
May 1995. Chechnya

“, where one of the main roles was played by Emily Ratajkowski, a model who is often included in ratings of “the most beautiful women in the world.” Ratajkowski plays a future murder victim and subsequently her corpse. Inviting an Instagram star with cheerful photos in a swimsuit to play the role of a dead man seems absurd only at first glance. We figure out when admiration for dead bodies (especially women's) became a trend and how viewers around the world sexualize corpses.

Separation from death

Today we perceive death completely differently than we did a couple of centuries ago. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was part of everyday life. Processing corpses at home, organizing funerals independently, and mourning rituals reminiscent of the cyclical nature of time made death understandable and close to everyone. The mortality rate was much higher, and it was almost impossible to avoid direct confrontation with someone else's death.

In the modern era, death has become an extraordinary event: the quality of medicine has improved, and the practices of experiencing death have changed. Today we are, as it were, separated from dying: corpses are immediately taken to the morgue, funeral arrangements are handled by third parties, and long mourning and mourning are outdated. Jacques Lynn Foltin in his essay “The Popular Dead and the Sexy Dead: Mass culture, Forensic Science and the Rising of the Dead,” writes about how the culture of death denial has become entrenched. Corpses and real (and not aestheticized) death began to cause horror and rejection.

Today we are, as it were, separated from dying: corpses are immediately taken to the morgue, funeral arrangements are carried out by third parties, and long mourning and mourning are outdated

Anthropologist Jeffrey Gorer traces an interesting dynamic in his essay “The Pornography of Death.” He believes that when society was weaned off real death, and sex became less taboo, death took its place as a taboo and at the same time exciting topic. According to the researcher, it was the alienation of real death that led the audience to the desire to watch violent, unnatural dying. Gorer calls this phenomenon "death pornography" because of the cruelty and cynicism of such images, as well as the complete rejection of the practice of mourning. Gorer compares today's fetishization of corpses and murder to attitudes toward death in the Victorian era: a time when modesty and virginity were most valued in women, marked by high demand for pornography and sex services.

Death has ceased to be visible, but has not disappeared anywhere: we continue to be afraid of dying and are trying to cope with this fear in the space of pop culture, says Elizabeth Emerick. One of the most common tools is the rationalization of death through medicine. Forensic scientists and forensic scientists who conduct autopsies are becoming perhaps the most popular in TV series (for example, in “NCIS”, “CSI” or “Anatomy of Death”). This trend dates back to the anatomical theaters of the 19th century, however, then the audience still saw a real corpse, but now we are more likely to see a parody of death.

Pop necrophilia

It’s not for nothing that Gorer called this spectator hobby “death pornography”: in pop culture, the death of a person does not at all prohibit one from feeling desire for him. In the series “NCIS,” one of the criminologists, working with yet another corpse of a man, collects sperm samples from his clothes and sneers at his posthumous erection—then the specialists’ dialogues continue to revolve around sex. The line between the living and the dead is becoming thinner, and corpses on the TV screen turn out to be more attractive than living heroes.

Ruth Penfold-Manus, in her article "Dead Bodies, Popular Culture and the Science of Forensics: The Public Obsession with Death," suggests that we observe a corpse with a voyeuristic gaze, taking pleasure in violating another person's personal space. From this perspective, it is the dead body that is most pliable and defenseless - voyeurism, in essence, allows repeated violence to be committed against it.

Classical psychoanalysis reminds us that birth, sex and death are ritually connected and inseparable from each other: Sigmund Freud insisted that humans have two key instincts - eros and thanatos. Jacques Lacan believed that eros and aesthetics act as guides to death, turning it into something fascinating. This subtle connection, by the way, is ironically reflected in French: orgasm is called in this language “the little death” (la petite mort).

Contemporary media researchers pay attention to how corpses respond to the demand for “young and sexy bodies.” Jacques Lynn Foltin reminds us that the dead body also becomes a commodity, “perfect” corpses are desacralized, and this takes the viewer too far from reflecting on the nature of death.

Venus for autopsy

The fascination with dead bodies is, of course, not limited to TV series or movies. Real dead people sometimes interest the public even more than fictional ones. Just remember how Princess Diana and model Anna Nicole Smith died. Tabloid readers wanted to know all the details - from the extent of the damage to the general portrait - and, of course, they wanted to see photos from the morgue. Jacques Lynn Foltin notes that pathologists had to convince the public that the dead bodies of both heroines were “beautiful.” They said about Diana that she remained “elegant and beautiful” and generally seemed to be sleeping. Smith's body was described as "charming but rapidly decomposing." Sex symbols are required to remain objects of desire even after death - for example, on forums there was a very active discussion about whether it was ethical to masturbate while thinking about Anna Nicole Smith after her death.

By the way, the phrase that Princess Diana’s dead body looked like it was sleeping refers us to numerous variations of the myths about Snow White and Sleeping Beauty: female corpses or almost corpses have been sung for a long time. Back in the 18th century, the Italian sculptor Clemente Susini came up with the “Anatomical Venus” - a sculpture of a woman from which one can study the structure of the body. Now “Anatomical Venus” seems frightening and seems to refer to necrophilia, because it corresponds to all the canons of beauty of that time and looks deliberately attractive.

In the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe confessed his love for women’s dead bodies, believing that “death beautiful woman"is undoubtedly the most poetic thing in the world." And John Everett Millais created the world’s most famous image of “Ophelia” - it still does not lose popularity and is copied by girls who take photographs of themselves in the bathroom, illustrating intimate confessions.

Fetish or victim?

The aestheticization of female corpses remains a particular example of objectification. That is why dead female bodies must look “attractive” - just remember the legendary corpse of Laura Palmer.

Her image is also important because it demonstrates the mechanics of how a female corpse becomes a space for male fantasy. In “Twin Peaks,” writes Alice Bolin in her book “Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession,” we see how a woman’s life is told and conjectured by a man, while she and her story remain only an object of male interpretation.

Laura Palmer also illustrates the classic myth of the victim who has lost control of her life. The image of a “broken girl” who cannot resist the circumstances that contribute to her death is an unconditional sexual bait. A minx and a princess who could not be rescued from the castle, the audience can only decadently admire her corpse.

Dead female bodies must look “attractive” - just remember the legendary corpse of Laura Palmer

An aesthetic female corpse can also be considered perfect figure submission, Alice Bolin believes. Becoming a beautiful dead body, a woman is completely deprived of her subjectivity, will and ability to resist. This is why the female corpse in fashion photography is often likened to a doll, as in a 2007 W Magazine shoot where the models are both dead and doll-like. Their poses and exposure in the frame also refer to the experience of sexual violence before death. And a similar metaphor is often used in photography or cinema. For example, in the filming of Guy Bourdin, where they converge sexual violence, death and the image of a fetish woman.

By the way, the artist Thelma Van Rensberg suggests linking the fascination with female corpses with fetish. The female body, having lost its subjectivity and will, ceases to be dangerous and mysterious for a man; in fact, at this moment the woman turns into an object. The love for dead female bodies, of course, does not mean that necrophilia has become more popular or that pop culture promotes murder, but it clearly highlights the problems with experiencing death in the modern world.

Photos: Wikimedia Commons, Lynch/Frost Productions, A Contraluz Films