Thailand Siriraj Medical Museum

This photo was taken at Siriraj Medical Museum in Bangkok Thailand. These Siamese twins are preserved for those that are fascinated and curious. Everyone has different moral grounds on this kind of thing and I’m interested to hear your opinions. Maybe just perhaps what I am trying to do with photographing these places is more profound then I originally set out to achieve. People tell me how they weren’t aware of these places, of these human tragedies, that they are not accustomed to seeing death so real and straight up as how I portray in my photographs. 

I am showing them something that in the western world you are grown to fear and be repulsed and yet there is always this underlying fascination to one extent or other about these subjects. I truly believe that the less restrictions put on photographers to capture these sites, the more images can enter the world in a safe environment and maybe one day the death taboo can be one more relaxed. Photos of death are hidden in secret websites, but for some they seek these out, we are grown to think only sick people would wish to happen upon such things. But I don’t see these people as sick, curious, information deprived, interested perhaps by something so hidden to our society. Horror films are made for the reason that humans are by nature are drawn to a darker side of consciousness, it exists in all of us. These films represent a safe unreal environment to play out these inquisitive urges to witness what death means to us. 

But perhaps if photographs can be made at these dark tourism sites and more people learn about the things in the real world, we can begin to look death more in its real face and become interested to learn that maybe it doesn’t have to be so hidden. We can stop living in a fake reality and embrace death and become more accepting of it like in pretty much all of the underdeveloped world.