The Disaster Series

In The Disaster Series, Cindy Stelmackowich comments on the impact of natural disasters on the western culture. Whether they are in the news, movies or literature, these disaster images leave their mark in our consciousness. Stelmackowich explains her fascination with 19th-century medical depictions and how the figures can seem simultaneously alive and dead due to their gesture, giving the illustrations a subjective emotional quality that today's anatomical depictions often lack. By literally placing the scene of the disaster into the anatomy, she symbolizes our modern-day inability to extricate the emotion of disasters from our imaginations. See some of her other works at cindystelmackowich.com.

The Disaster Series are ultrachromium prints on lustre paper and appear courtesy of the Patrick Mikhail Gallery. Anatomical drawings from the series originally appeared in A System of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body, Accompanied with Descriptions and Physiological, Pathological, and Surgical Observations by John Lizars.

[via getguerilla]