Clearly, the freezer is more attractive than the grave, even if one has doubts about the future capabilities of science. With bad luck, the frozen people will simply remain dead, as they would have in the grave. But with good luck, the manifest destiny of science will be realized, and the resuscitees will drink the wine of centuries unborn. The likely prize is so enormous that even slender odds would be worth embracing.
—Robert C.W. Ettinger
In 1962, Robert Ettinger published The Prospect of Immortality, the book that gave birth to the idea of 'cryonics' – the process of freezing a human body after death in the hope that scientific advances might one day restore life.
Half a century later, between 2006 and 2015, Murray Ballard has undertaken an extensive photographic investigation of the practice Ettinger inspired. Ballard's photographic series of the same name, takes the viewer on a journey through the small but dedicated international cryonics community, from the English seaside retirement town of Peacehaven; through the high-tech laboratories of Arizona; to the rudimentary facilities of KrioRus, on the outskirts of Moscow. Worldwide there are approximately 200 patients stored permanently in liquid nitrogen, with a further two thousand people signed up for cryonics after death.
The series combines photographs of the technical processes involved, alongside portraits of the people engaged in the quest to overcome the ‘problem of death’. Whilst members have often been ridiculed for their views, Ballard takes an objective stance, allowing the viewer to consider the ethics of the practice, and to decide whether members are caught up in a fantasy world of science fiction, or genuine scientific innovation.
The Prospect of Immortality by Murray Ballard is published by GOST Books.