The New Spirit Photography: Light Painting With a Cadaver Scan

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In 1993, convicted murderer Joseph Paul Jernigan was executed and his body was donated to science. The cadaver was thinly cut, and 1,871 slices of Joseph were digitized and animated for the Visible Human Project. For the 12:31 Project — Joseph’s strangest reincarnation yet — artists Croix Gagnon and Frank Schot reconstructed him as a 3D phantom in long-exposure photographs. These morbidly magical “light paintings” were created with a laptop playing the animation on fullscreen, moved slowly though the barely-lit outdoors. The shapes stretching above parking lots and weaving through branches are reminiscent of olde hoax spirit photography — only they’re perfectly anatomically correct. See the animation and the “ghosts” in our gallery, after the jump.

You can buy the prints here with all proceeds benefiting Amnesty International.

Courtesy Project 12:31

Courtesy Project 12:31

Courtesy Project 12:31

Courtesy Project 12:31

Courtesy Project 12:31

Courtesy Project 12:31

Courtesy Project 12:31

The Visible Human Project cadaver slices, animated: