Visualizing the Judeo-Christian notion of the imago Dei, of human beings created materially and morally in the image of God, presents a fascinating challenge for all manner of photographer, past or present, commercial or amateur. By virtue of its technical limitations, the photographic medium repudiates tropes of corporeal idealism and divine materiality; illuminating the truth of humankind's inglorious materiality, our earthly suffering, with a representational precision so sharp, it rivals the cutting edge of even the keenest scalpel.

The visual realities associated with photographic flesh stand in stark contrast to centuries of religious iconography. Archetypal depictions in painted or sculptural form show the human body in a state of quasi-divinity, basking in God's embrace, unblemished and corporeally whole, regardless of death or supposed level of decomposition. As an extreme departure point from these classic works, dissection photography haunts religious representations of an idealized earthly body, or the body as a sacred vessel of the soul, by inculcating viewers to the innumerable authenticities and unavoidable imperfections of mortal flesh. These images depict the body as a graveyard, not a temple; a charnel house of jaggedly cut muscle, broken spines, and buckets of fat. Gore by gaslight; such is the ferocity of the dissecting room.

Coming to terms with such stark visual dichotomies thrust many a medical student, and student amateur photographer looking to capture this arena on film, into the midst of an epic battle of beliefs. Faith pitted against science; the eschatological doctrines of a religious upbringing, struggling with the inglorious reality that a “young sawbones” must “mutilate the remains of their deceased fellow citizens” and live amidst the fragile and foul materials of human mortality.