post mortem

a person's death ends her existence. still, the body remains.

until the 19th century, death was so prevalent in everyday life that it couldn't be denied: people nearly always died at home. it was the relatives' task to wash the body and cover it.

in the course of industrialization and the development of modern medicine, mortality rates dropped drastically. more and more, elderly people moved to hospitals and nursing homes, long before they died. the thought of death itself increasingly became unbearable for most people.

today, death has mostly vanished from public perception. most people die in institutions, and in case someone actually still dies at home, the corpse is immediately taken away by morticians in order to prepare the burial.

but what happens with a corpse between the moment it is given into the care of professionals and the burial?

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quæstiones medico-legales
hinter den kulissen der rechtsmedizin

every evening tv-shows like csi, crossing jordan or quincy show legal medical experts at work and the field of forensics also have long since entered the german crime series. but the medical image of forensic medicine has only little in common with reality. in fact, only few people have realistic ideas of how things work in the autopsy hall or the forensic laboratories and what else belongs to the legal medical’s everyday life.

the photographer patrik budenz wanted to find out more. on the basis of the medial image, he accompanied the forensic medicals during their work at the site of crime, in the section room, in the laboratory and at their desk. as a photographer he proceeded as carefully as the medicals themselves. he exactly observed what happened and translated it into pictures, which precisely document the medical’s daily routine.

patrik budenz has deliberately renounced drastic effects. the work on the series nevertheless became a boundary experience for him, because a lot of what legal medicals are confronted with in their daily life lies far beyond most people’s imagination.

the head of the institute for legal medicine at berlin’s charité hospital, prof. dr. michael tsokos, introduces the topic with an essay. a detailed discussion, which the photographer led with the sociologist prof. dr. hubert knoblauch and the expert for post mortem photography pd dr. matthias christen, emphasizes the dealing with images of dead people and dissected corpses.

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