Patrick Millard's cryonics photography
Patrick Millard is a Michigan based artist who works with different media including photography, painting, mixed media, sound, and installation. He currently works as an adjunct professor of photography at Grand Valley State University and Grand Rapids Community College and is a photography instructor at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids.
One of his current photography projects involves cryonics and he hopes to visit other cryonics organizations to continue the project:
Cryonics first began in the late 1960’s as a way to preserve the legally dead with the hope that they will one day be brought back through new technologies with revived youth and health. Patients are cooled to a very low temperature [below -312ºF, -196ºC] with liquid nitrogen and cryopreserved at that temperature in what are called cryostats. It is inside these Hard Shell, Soft Vacuum [HSSV], or Steel Dewar in the case of Alcor, cryostats that the patient will wait out the time necessary to create life extending and reparative medical advances which will allow the rejuvenation and life extension that is desired. The hope is that one day future medicine will not only cure disease, aging, and death for those still living,but also provide the opportunity for those who have been in cryostasis to be brought back to a life and body that has been returned to youth and happiness.
Visit the artist’s website.