Post Mortem

This work is a part of a series studying the tools of labour, a celebration of the beauty and attraction of the working tool. There is a minimalism to these tools, a stark symmetry that is appealing to the senses.

I was invited by Guys Hospital in London to photograph the tools used during an autopsy. It became clear that to photograph the tools used for birth would pose interesting comparisons. These were photographed at CHONY here in New York earlier this year.

The birth process and the death process are two of the most unchanging acts of physical labour. Greeks performed autopsies 2,500 years ago. Dissection of the dead human body has been central to medicine education since the Renaissance. Birth tools arrived much later, Peter Chamberlain, a Huguenot ,started to work with obstetrical forceps. He was the first doctor in charge of the royal family and attended the birth of Charles II. Medicine is now so technologically advanced yet still we use medieval tools. The use of those tools in birth and death are an attempt to control and categorize two events that are raw and unobtainable.

So much of what we see in work now is about distancing us from the object of our labours. With these tools there is an intense physical engagement with the object.

Steve Pyke
New York City. August 2005