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A Brief Summary Of The Morgue By Andres Serrano

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The photographic series The Morgue by Latino-American, Andres Serrano serves as both a documentary and fictional photography series because his photographs and depiction of real corpses moves between the ambiguous space of fictional and documentary photography. Serrano is known for his use of unconventional means in his photos which includes using corpses, feces, blood, or other bodily fluids. His most notable work is known as “Piss Christ,” which is a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a container of his own urine, which was highly controversial in the art world but had earned him the most fame. In The Morgue, Serrano uses real corpses whose cause of deaths ranged from abuse to disease to homicide which allowed him access to a variety …show more content…

2), has elements that definitely make the viewer question whether the subject is actually deceased or just sleeping. At a first glance, the child looks like the infant is sleeping and the mother or father wrapped them in a white blanket in order to keep them warm (Sapikowski, 2013). Without the title it is just another picture of a baby sleeping but when the viewer reads “Fatal Meningitis II,” the photograph becomes grim and eerie just like the other ones. Serrano uses the white blanket as a metaphor of an innocent and pure child lost to a fatal disease, but when it is contrasted with the black background it gives the viewer a sense of an abyssal or dismal sensation. The black background, unlike the last photograph, removes the child from any sort of context of its living past because it is rare to see a picture of a sleeping child not surrounded with bright colors or toys (CITE). The placement of the blanket can also come into question because babies are delicate and fragile beings that a mother would not wrap the babies face with a blanket because she would fear that her baby would suffocate. The placement of the blanket serves as a barrier between the viewer and the child because if the face were to be shown, the viewer would begin to sympathize with this photograph and project a child that they know or have known into the photograph

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