23 year old Evelyn Mchale committed suicide jumping off the Empire State Building in May 1st, 1947. This unusual image was taken by a photography student the happens to be around a few minutes after her death. It haunts me since James showed it to me earlier today. A lot was written about it already, for example here in Jason Kottke's blog, where there's also a link to a caption from the original life publication of this amazing, eerie image. She looks like a hollywood star laying in her soft bed after a hard day on the set of some stupid comedy. The fact her suicide note was so desperately sad, writing about her fiancee "He is much better off without me … I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody", only adds to the depressive glamour of this moment. A beautiful demonstration of the archaic, basic relation between death and aesthetics.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtJRkCy-P5ALH9HcK-Ql1RG4bbpsMKYJDVAJDEyOIr6RsazYZkDzwz6zGh64Ab0NkNT11SfbuiJNYcH15uJiuXr9SV1G8E3XoHG_N51_8Xeq00WKJoxTLmvO6vVKadw-TqHhDGg7oINew/s1600/evelyn-mchale.jpg)