What the soul weighs

2018-current.

During a study performed in 1901, Dr. Duncan MacDougall, a respected physician and head of the Research Society from Haverhill, Massachusetts, hypothesized that the human soul was material and had mass. He proposed that evidence of its existence would be seen in a measurable drop in body weight postmortem. Using six patients, Dr. MacDougall weighed his volunteers before and immediately after their deaths. Only one lost any significant amount of measurable weight.

21 grams. Roughly 1 ounce.

Influenced by this experiment and the superstition that a photograph can steal your soul, I created my own visual representation of a soul’s weight using a series of self-portraits and snapshots taken throughout the years. Beginning with images from high school, I added photographs until I reached six ounces, one ounce for each participant in Dr. MacDougall’s experiment.