The Church, naturally, had resisted the closing of Les Innocents until the innumerable complaints of neighboring residents and businesses made the issues of the disgusting charnel ground too visible to ignore.

The process of moving the bones, begun right before the French Revolution, took about 18 months, and was commenced with a somber procession of wagons, priests and church officials offering the Last Rites along the way. The remains were initially thrown down a mine shaft, and were eventually stacked neatly in a system of underground caves, mines and tunnels that interlaces the ground beneath the Left Bank. As part of the arrangements, these caves and mines had been specially prepared (mainly, enlarged) for the purpose they would serve.

After Les Innocents was cleared and a vegetable and spice market put in its place, cemetery after cemetery was dug up and, in the end, about six to seven million sets of human remains were brought down and put into perpetual storage. Many were victims of the bubonic plague. Yet the word catacombs is something of a misnomer; bone storage areas are properly called ossuaries. The French word for bone is os.

The Catacombs of Paris has been open to the public for many decades. As late as the 1960s, you were given a candle and told not to wander too far from other people. If you find yourself in an off-the-path area, it's possible to get lost in the caves and never return. Today, tourists stay in a narrow, fenced-off corridor that now has electricity. People called 'Catophiles', a kind of Catacombs cult, explore and meet in the closed off areas, entering by way of manholes, climbing down 30 meter vertical ladders.

The morning of Sunday, July 24, with a couple of weeks of pre-planning, a Planet Waves photo expedition descended into this underworld for the purpose of doing nude photos.

Ange, our intrepid model, was joined by a friend from London named Nick (pictured second from left), and I had recruited two people to assist -- Adrianna from the Netherlands, and Christophe from just about everywhere (far right).

This happened to be at a time of rather incredible violence in the world, and we all had death lingering around our minds.

We arrived at about 8 am and were the first people in line. We waited in the rain for a while, bought tickets (I got in with my press card, one of its most useful purposes -- museums), and we bolted down the 130 stairs to the bottom. There's a 1 KM tunnel that takes you to the ossuary; we ran for a while; halfway there, Ange exchanged her clothes for a black kimono. We finally reached the bone chambers and began working. If I recall correctly, I was the only person who had been down there before.

At this point, we were about 10 minutes ahead of the tourists. We managed to work undetected by the guards, who I am sure would have been amused to discover our project.

Nick and Christophe watched the perimeter, while Adi and I worked with Ange. We moved from location to location, working in less than ideal lighting (very dark areas combined with intense harsh incandescent light).

By the end, we were about one minute ahead of the crowd, and finally had to work with Ange dressed -- lots of people bring their kids down to see the bones which, in keeping with their long tradition, are a source of revenue (now for the city rather than the Catholic Church). We wondered, however, what kind of childhood memory the vision of a beautiful, voluptuous and nude young woman with her arms extended in that environment would have created.

These photos we're presenting this month are a few of the better ones, and have been cleaned up by Ange in Photoshop. We did have some technical issues (this kind of work requires an image stabilized lens, which I now have); but I think they capture the spirit of the experience pretty well.