About Us

Back Issues

Store

Links

Home

Advertising Info

Contact

© 2009
website by Gone West
back

Are your corpses real? Do you dig them up?

Actually, we don't personally 'dig them up.' We're not grave robbers! The corpses are shipped to us from several locations -- most notably South America, Eastern China and Guam, where the laws are more lenient about intercontinental shipment of cadavers. The corpses are then stacked on dry ice after being dusted with a preserving powder called 'Cureodite' which halts the body's natural decaying process. Some of the bodies (or as we call them "corpse models") are destined for labs and Universities, but a few "fall off the truck" and we borrow them for a photo shoot and then promptly return them where they are dissected by medical students or wind up being used on shows like CSI. We don't need consent because technically, we are only 'borrowing' the bodies for the shoot. Once in the states, the corpses are received in our deep freeze storage facility (an unmarked warehouse in New Jersey) by our corpse stylist, who washes the bodies with a mixture of fructose, Spray and Wash, limestone powder and Coca Cola (which can be used for dozens of useful things). Then we use a process known as Plastination, which replaces the cadavers fat and water with certain plastics. You may be familiar with this process popularized in the the Body Worlds Exhibit and by founder Gunther von Hagens -- who we interviewed for our magazine . Anyhow, the plastination process sets the bodies in the positions we need them in for the photo shoot and also allows us to work with the corpses without the usual problems of decay, stench and maggots -- which could be a real turnoff for our female models and would create a bio hazard under the hot lights of a photo shoot.