The Parisian Morgue presents perhaps one of the best examples of the transformative force that institutional power brought to one of the most basic elements of life. Though throughout history the morgue had always served as “a depository for the anonymous dead”[1] the imposition of the state in this matter, specifically the police prefecture, strove to make the process of identification into a clean and ordered matter.
In the 18th century, the existing city morgue, also know as the basse-geole, was a remote underground site, linked with a Prison located at Chatelet. The basement viewing chamber, described as a “stinking pestilent place” came to represent everything wrong with prior levels of regulation in terms of institutional presence, hygiene, and order. In its role, pursuant of the identification of corpses, “visitors could only present themselves one at a time; in order to look into the horrible and somber cave they were forced to breathe the poisoned air of this grotto and put their faces against a narrow opening.”[2]
With an 1804 police order, under the new administration of the First Empire, the morgue was officially transferred to a “specially designed building in the shape of a Greek temple,” a former butcher-shop located at the place du Marche-Neuf. The location was not only central to the city of Paris, located on the Ile-de-la-Cite, but brought with it a massive increase in visibility by a bustling and curious public. The architecture, which promoted a stark visual presentation of death, with a gigantic viewing salon, bridged the gap between living and dead, in a senses feeding into the visual culture and sense of spectacle evolving in this time period.
The institution of the morgue, was therefore central to the production of a new visual culture in Paris. The architecture sought to emphasize the clean lines, and grandiosity of a new French manner of thinking – in this sense too, its subject matter, death came to be increasingly linked with a visual manner of thinking within Paris. Themes of fantasmorgia, shadows & darkness came to represent a fascination of the unknown beyond its administrative function. The initial curiosity which would bring as many as 40,000 individuals through the morgue’s viewing rooms in one day [3], evolved into a manner of thinking that embraced these new forms on a daily level.
April 23, 2009, 1:14pm
