In the fall of 1971 I began photographing in the Allegheny Coroner's Office in downtown Pittsburgh. Thanks to the help of Sally Dixon, head of the Film Department at the Carnegie Museum, and the kind cooperation of Coroner Wecht, I was to be permitted to photograph Autopsy - a term which comes from the Greek meaning: "The act of seeing with one's own eyes." Within two weeks I had completed the photography; and I felt at that time that this film would be the third in a trilogy beginning with the film EYES and followed by DEUS EX.

"... Stan Brakhage, entering, with his camera, one of the forbidden, terrific locations of our culture, the autopsy room. It is a place wherein, inversely, life is cherished, for it exists to affirm that no one of us may die without knowing exactly why. All of us, in the person of the coroner, must see that, for ourselves, with our own eyes.

"What was to be done in that room, Stan? And then, later, with the footage? I think it must have been mostly to stand aside: to 'clear out,' as much as possible, with the baggage of your own expectations, even, as to what a work of art must look like; and to see, with your own eyes, what coherence might arise within a universe for which you could decree only the boundaries." - Hollis Frampton