The Dead Bodies of Amsterdam - Body Worlds: The happiness project. (graphic content warning)

An Exhibition of Dead Bodies

Yesterday I visited "Body Worlds: The happiness project" in Amsterdam and it was by far the most disgusting and interesting exhibition I have visited in my life!

So Body Worlds: The happiness project is an exhibition where they tell the story about the influence of happiness on our health and body. Here comes the interesting part: they tell this story using only real human (dead) bodies! I know it sounds disgusting at first, but in a creepy and disturbing way it's just gorgeous.

The creator

The exhibition is created by Dr. Gunter von Hagens, he came up with a technique of plastination that preserve the bodies for decades. All the human plastinates are from people who donated their bodies for plastination via a body donation program. And seeing the exhibition you ask you the same question over and over: "Damn how much time and people did it take to make this?". Well, to produce specimens for Body Worlds, von Hagens employs 340 people at five laboratories in three countries, China, Germany and Kyrgyzstan. The time spend at one body varies from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, depending the difficulty of the procedure. The exposition was first displayed in 1995 in Tokyo. Today you can find exhibitions of "Body Worlds" all over the world and all of them have a different themes. The one in Amsterdam is "happiness" and works only with human bodies. In some other exhibitions they also display the anatomy of animals.

Best exhibition I have ever seen

I love a good exhibition once and a while but this one is just on an whole other level. The fact that you're looking at the anatomy of real dead person, knowing they lived a life, just does something to you.
You ever watched a horror movie or a CSI serie, and secretly wondered how a body cut open would look like in reality? Or is it just me and should I start worrying about my psychopath side? :D
Well anyway, this exhibition perfectly answered this question for me. 

My favourite part:

As you can see in the pictures: they don't just display a dead body. No, the bodies are put in very artistic almost poetic way. It didn't feel like I was watching dead people, it felt as I was watching art.
And thinking of the precision and years and years of work that went into these bodies/art pieces, just blows me away.

If you have the chance to visit one of these exhibitions, I highly recommend it!
Price of the exhibition: €18 (in my opinion a really fair price)

All pictures taken by myself
Camera: Canon M3

There has been a big controverse around the use of the dead bodies, what do you think about this exhibition?
-> let me know in the comments below

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Thanks for reading Steemians!
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