Collections
Medicate

Dying is Not Good For You by Jason Oddy

In Dying is Not Good For You, Jason Oddy revisits the theme of death. This time in a series of large-scale colour photographs taken in Cryonics institutes in Scottsdale and Detroit. In these warehouses Heath Robinson-like chambers hold the bodies of clients, deep-frozen until medical science can give them a second life. In D.I.N.G.F.Y.1 it is only when one reads the label on the vessel 'fluid waste only' that it one realises that this is a drain for human bodily fluids.

D.I.N.G.F.Y. 1 by Jason Oddy © Jason Oddy

The brilliant whiteness of the image reflects the sterility of the operating theatre and the medical procedure until one notices the peeling paper label, reveals the improvised nature of cryonics equipment. Similarly, it is only on learning that the chamber in D.I.N.G.F.Y. 2 holds about 10 bodies, that the impact of the image hits.

Oddy writes 'If followers of cryonics consider this speculative science to be a way of countering death, then these pictures suggest that the environments they have created are ritualised spaces whose underlying purpose is to deflect not so much death itself, but rather the cryonicists' very manifest fear of mortality. The clinical rendering of these elements invites us to consider the countless contradictions that arise when such a primitively idealistic concept as this is put into practice. Yet the wish to live on or to give a loved one a new life is something we can all understand.'

Jason Oddy (born 1967 in London) studied French Language and Literature at University College London for his BA and MA between 1986 and 1991 before completing a PhD in Critical Theory. He is subsequently worked as a photographer and critic. He is represented by the Photographers Gallery, London. His photographic investigations into death and the traces humans leave in architectural spaces have been exhibited widely including shows at The Photographers Gallery, London, the Architectural Association, London, Paris Photo, Paris, Kanal 20, Brussels, Gallery 24, New York as well as in Gone Missing, a group exhibition curated by Severn Taylor at Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NY. His work can be found in the collections of Deutsche Bank, Channel 4 and Citibank.

This work was purchased with support from The Wellcome Trust.

1+1=1 by Jordan Baseman
Set Conversation Piece by Christine Borland
The Last Supper by Damien Hirst
Dying is Not Good For You by Jason Oddy
Silence by Lyndall Phelps
“I” by Alexa Wright
Sick Sticks by Laura Glassar
Garden by Tania Kovats
Inhaler and Crack Bottles by Keith Coventry
Catherine Long by Marc Quinn