The aesthetics of the living body have long fascinated artists working in every medium of art. Mütter Museum presents the work of a distinguished group of photographers who have been drawn to explore the body stripped of its superficial coverings down to its inner realities. There is real beauty beneath the surface both in life, as revealed by the surgeon’s scalpel, and in death, as revealed by the pathologist’s or anatomist’s knife.

The contemporary photographs in this book, combined with powerful images from the Museum’s historical photography collection, stretch the boundaries to find beauty not in its conventional form, but in its opposite: the deformed, the broken, the disfigured body of those who suffered physical abnormality, trauma, or destructive disease. There is a terrifying beauty as well in the spirits of those who endured nature’s challenges to human life and to medical understanding. The photographers whose works appear in the book are:

Shelby Lee Adams • Max Aguilera-Hellweg • Gwen Akin & Allan Ludwig • Candace diCarlo • Dale Gunnoe • Steven Katzman • Mark Kessell • Scott Lindgren • Olivia Parker • Rosamond Purcell • Richard Ross • Ariel Ruiz i Altaba • Harvey Stein • Arne Svenson • William Wegman • Joel-Peter Witkin