Had Condon been able, therefore, to devise a means of obtaining either
legal authorization or the consent causa mortis of his subjects (or perhaps even the
posthumous consent of their families), he would have been free to express himself by
taking the pictures that he did. Condon, however, did not receive authorization, nor did
he receive the consent of the families of those whose bodies he chose to photograph.
After consulting with the prosecutor’s office, morgue officials denied his request for
permission to use morgue bodies for his “life cycles” project. There is absolutely no
evidence to suggest that he ever approached the families of the deceased, perhaps because he feared the sharpness of their reply. Rather, Condon took it upon himself, knowing that
he did not have permission, to enter the morgue without authorization and to turn it into
his photography studio, randomly selecting corpses and using their lifeless forms for his
subjects, even going so far as to plant symbolic props on several in an apparent effort to
enhance his artistic message. It was this conduct by Condon—the unauthorized treatment
of bodies of others’ loved ones as objects to be photographed for his personal art
project—that the state sought to punish.