This image was created to accompany a story for our research magazine. The story is about art professor, Lily Lee, who weaves burial shrouds for unidentified female victims of murders that took place across the West for decades. Lee researches victims through the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and other such databases. She collects data – victims’ height, weight, age, the GPS coordinates of the sites where their bodies were found – and uses a weaving software program, Fiberworks, to translate the numbers into original patterns. The shrouds match the height of the women they memorialize. The density of the weave patterns reflect the state of decomposition of their bodies. The particular shroud Lee is holding in this photo represents a body that was missing their torso.
