Over time, popular media have utilized death to their advantage by playing with its pose to peak audience interest and retain viewership. By means of production and special editing techniques, they package death in unprecedented and often bizarre ways, leaving audiences to regard the moment as something “natural,” when, of course, it’s anything but. Carpet Death by New York-based photography duo ioulex, is an exploration of this notion via the emblematic American television show Dallas.

“Each sequence is a variation on the final frame of a season: the frozen still of a fallen torso. The familiar pose inevitably evokes a devotional theme: a posthumously idealized body, a death pinup.” -ioulex

With a background in fashion photography, ioulex explore themes of beauty, repetition, and controlled loss. Through their camp investigation they search for insight into the mechanism of desire and the oddity of death without decay.

ioulex is Julia Koteliansky and Alexander Kerr, originally from Moscow and Boston respectively. They met in Paris while attending Parsons School of Design. Currently based in New York, Julia and Alexander have been commissioned photographic assignments by prominent national and international publications. Their photographs have been included in group shows at Exit Art and Riviera galleries.