Cryopreservation Unit, Cryonics Institute, Clinton Township, Michigan

Taryn Simon

2004, printed 2007 · Chromogenic print · Photographs

For her series of photographs and subsequent book, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Simon gained extraordinary access to a wide variety of restricted sites throughout the United States, from the mission control center of a nuclear submarine to a research laboratory at Harvard Medical School where vials of live HIV are stored. Each photograph is accompanied by a detailed caption written by the artist, providing background information about the site and what goes on behind its closed doors. This picture shows the space-age-looking unit in which the wife and mother of the inventor of cryostasis-the preservation of the bodies of recently deceased people at very low temperatures-lie suspended between death and a hoped-for second life.

Artist

Taryn Simon

Date

2004, printed 2007

Medium

Chromogenic print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of Hideyuki Osawa, 2007