tooth soup

…take photos with you:

This one comes via Boing Boing Gadgets:

“Wayne Martin Bleger makes pinhole cameras using a variety of materials including precious stones, metals, human organs, and bone. This piece, entitled Third Eye, features many of these materials, all constructed around the 150 year-old skull of a 13 year-old girl. The film is exposed to light through titular ocular cavity making a Polaroid momento mori. The photos taken with this camera (one of which is after the jump) stay with the theme, their blurriness and patina making them look as if they were snatched from the memories of the dead.”

And if you head to his website, you’ll see it really has taken some nice photos.

A lot of people seem to be taking exception to the fact that he’s used a 15-year-old girl’s skull in the making of the camera. The standard arguments apply: would they be as offended if it had been an older man’s skull? Does it matter if our bodies are used for a further purpose once we’re dead? Is this not a fittingly beautiful piece of art to enshrine the deceased in? And so on. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the macabre element here, but that’s probably because I’m a scientist and as most people know, Scientists Are Like That. That is, the majority of us don’t believe in any everlasting soul that may be desecrated by the act of affixing metal to it and turning it into an attractive piece of kit. Thankfully, we’re also usually the kind of folk that don’t mind people believing otherwise, maintaining that everyone is welcome to their opinion and beliefs.

Though I’d probably warn off those objectors from the piece entitled ‘Heart‘.

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