A Madonna Image

Jeffrey Silverthorne - 1972

I know this is going to sound deranged but this is one of the most moving portraits I have seen in such a long time.  I came across this in this weeks issue of British Journal of Photography.  There was an interview with the photographer Jeffrey Silverthorne and one of the photograph was this one.  The caption  reads '...Woman who died in her sleep 1972...' and that's it.   What the photograph is is the body of women who has just been sown up after a post mortum has taken place.

So why is it so moving?   Well for me the reason is the relaxed nature of her face.   She seems to be sleeping, a very warm and happy sleep.  She does not have a care in the world, her inner beauty radiating through.  Now this of course is ruddily interrupted when you look down and see the industrial sewing that has stitched her mortal remains back together.  Perhaps the most poignant yet brutal aspect of the way that the woman's right nipple has been cut in halt by the insertion and then sown back together.   Given all this violence to the body the woman still possess a beauty and stillness.   The main question is who placed her right arm up to her head?  Was the photographer or mortuary technicians?  Either way it just seems to extenuate the beauty of the women.  Is she just waking and stretching after the most refreshing sleep?

The only down side to the copy of the image I have appended to this is that the copy is not very good.   It lacks much of the delicate shades that the copy in the magazine has.  I just wonder what a good quality print would look like and how this might change the appreciation of the women.