12:31

Photographer Frank Schott shot the series 12:31. The photographs show the body of Joseph Paul Jernigan (January 31, 1954 – August 5, 1993) who was a Texas murderer, executed by lethal injection at 12:31 a.m. In 1981, Jernigan was sentenced to death for stabbing and shooting 75-year-old Edward Hale, who discovered him stealing a microwave oven. Jernigan spent 12 years in prison before his final plea for clemency was denied. His cadaver was sectioned and photographed for the Visible Human Project at the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center. Jernigan’s cadaver was encased and frozen in a gelatin and water mixture in order to create specimen for cutting. The specimen was then cut in the axial plane at 1 millimeter intervals. Each of the resulting 1,871 slices were photographed in both analog and digital, yielding more than 65 gigabytes of data. Afterwards an animation was created by using the entire data set (1,871 slices) of the male cadaver. The animation was played fullscreen on a computer, which was moved around by an assistant while being photographed in a dark environment. The resulting images are long-exposure ‘light paintings’ of the entire body.

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