Human Being grew out of a study on a group of over one hundred skeletons secretly buried a century ago. They were discovered in 1993, on the grounds of the Colorado Mental Health Institute, by prison inmates who were breaking ground to build the extension of an asylum for the criminally insane. 

“Photographs for this exhibit were generously loaned by the Denver Art Museum to the Center for Bioethics and Humanities,” said curator Simon Zalkind. “We hope that this exhibit will encourage a conversation about historical and aesthetic dimensions of the photograph as evidence and elegy, within the context of Modica’s ‘Human Being’ – a tragic story of the forgotten lives and the deaths of people who lived in Colorado over a century ago.”

• Sample Modica's work on Colorado Public Radio
• Review: Denver Post fine art critic Ray Mark Rinaldi
• Review: Colorado Springs Gazette 
• Westword names Human Being #1 "not-to-miss" show