Dark Dissolution

Post Mortem Portraits of Children Lecture

2011-09-27T22:14:00.003-02:30

Death Conference Talk at Grenfell Campus,
Memorial University of Newfoundland
September 2011

Sleeping Beauty: Post MortemPhotographic Portraiture of Children

From "Extended Moments" 1983

You may wonder why it is that I wouldwant to collect post mortem portraiture. As a visual artist, I have beeninterested in mortality and the transience of life, focusing on the artifactsthat prolong the signs of our existence. This began with memento mori stilllife and images using bad taxidermy. I could no longer ignore that I was reallyexploring my own mortality, so my current research has been focused on humantemporality and the passage of our bodies from dust to dust, so to speak. I amalso very interested in the artifacts we create as memorials.

The painted portrait has the powerto preserve for eternity an individual’s likeness and presence within a familygallery at a specific time in their life. When painted well, it can conveypersonality, although often idealized and perfected. The portrait cancommunicate status, wealth, and even one’s goals. Before the invention ofphotography, only the wealthy could afford to hire painters and portraitartists to make likenesses of family members.

Once photography gained a footholdin the 1840’s and prices dropped to a few cents so that anyone could get a photographmade, everyone was keen to have a portrait of each member of the family for thewall or carte-de-visite photo album. Many millions of portraits were made inthe early years of photography, and the numbers continued to climb as thehunger for a visual family record spread to all classes and sectors of societyworldwide.

Portraits were at this time formalaffairs, with a special trip to the photographic emporium in order to have alikeness made in one’s finest clothes. These events were usually at importantmilestones in a person’s life: coming of age, marriage, anniversaries, etc. Smallchildren were hard to control or keep still for the long exposure timesnecessary when sitting for a photographic portrait in the 19^thcentury. So few young children or infants appear in the photo record, unlessheld firmly in a mother’s lap or seated on a chair with someone’s hand on theirshoulder.

Memorializing the dead has also hada very long history and pre-history and makes up a separate portrait genre. Ittakes on many forms, from written and oral tributes, to tomb sculpture andportraits, death masks and memorial architecture.

The posthumous portrait painting ofthe recently deceased was common in some strata of society and can be seen as aprecursor to post mortem portraiture today. It was seen as a way to rememberthe personage as a once living being, idealized in a final portrait that liveson.

In the age of photography, however,the practice of post mortem portraiture was different in that it was far moreubiquitous and far more unforgiving in its documentation of reality. In themid-19^th century we find the production of post mortem photographicportraits alongside the continuing production of posthumous mourning paintings.

The big difference in motivationand outcome is that the painters created the illusion of life in death, while thephotographs were a much more imperfect illusion or pretense of sleep. As JayRuby writes in his seminal book “Secure the Shadow,” ...

“… post mortem photographs constitute a failed attempt at trompe l’oeilwhich fooled no one. Their function was not to keep the dead alive, but toenable mourners to acknowledge their loss.” (p.43)

The evolution of how society viewsdeath and the process of dying has effected how we face it in images. Whendeath was part of family life, taking place at home and in the presence of thewhole family, we were accustomed to it as a natural process. As society shiftedtowards a denial of the process of death, to where others undertook the task of dealing with the dying and dead, we lost thefirst-hand contact with the body of a dead person. By the 1930’s professionalshad completely taken over all aspects of a person’s passage from sick bed tocemetery. Family members were simply observers and mourners, and even then werenot allowed to see certain stages of preparation.

This past familiarity with death as part of life meant that it wasone of those passages that was also photographed. Professional photographersand studios openly advertized post mortem portraiture along with all theirother photographic services. In the mid-19^th century, articlesappeared in trade journals advising photographers on how to properly andartistically photograph the dead. Studios advertized their skills at makingpost mortem portraits in the convenience of the family’s own home. Mourningfamilies sought out these services to display the results in their homes or tosend them to far away relatives who may have missed the funeral.

The embossed memorial card was a commonVictorian option to the final portrait and was often handed out at funerals orgiven to relatives.

The deceased’s name was printed on a card with a poeticsentiment or sometimes a small photo-portrait of the person in life.

Other photo-based memorial cardswould use an earlier life portrait and surround it with a scroll motif orvignette.

This scroll-work border indicated throughits symbolism that the person depicted was no longer of this world.

Photographs of an arranged displayof the flowers that were sent to the funeral could also act as a memorial.Sometimes a photographic portrait could be found amidst these flowers.

Following a rigid Victorian code,family members who were photographed in the days, months and years following adeath would be seen wearing various stages of mourning clothes as dictated by traditions of fullmourning, half mourning, etc.

When tragedy struck and an infantwas stillborn or a small child died, this usually meant that there had not yet beenthe opportunity to obtain a photographic portrait of these new arrivals.

So after a death, there was astrong motivation for families to obtain a last portrait or family group. Ababy would be held in a mother’s arms as if asleep, sometimes surrounded byother family members. There was only a brief opportunity to have a final visualrecord made of the youngest. Most of the older family members may have alreadybeen photographed, so they were therefore less likelyto be carted off to the photographer’s studio for a coffin portrait, although thiswas done as well. An early advertising slogan suggested “Secure the Shadow,‘Ere the Substance Fades”. This may be one reason why we find the child orinfant dominating the tradition of post mortem portraiture.

In the 19^th C whenpeople were increasingly migrating to industrialized cites, the rates of infantmortality actually increased when compared to the 18^th C, reaching ashigh as 30 to 50%. This alone could also account for the predominance of postmortemportraiture being of children and infants.

At first, the dead child wasusually photographed at home, sometimes close up and with tenderness and dressedin their finest christening gown.

They were often depicted with thesentiments of “the last sleep,” lying in cradles or on beds or cots. Thesentiment of a final sleep pervaded the aesthetics of these portraits in thelatter half of the 19^th C. especially.

They might be seated in their babycarriages.

Sometimes, if a little older, theywere seated in chairs, even with their eyes open in a pose that was supposed tofeign life.

Older children were posed withfavorite toys, teddies, and wearing ornate dresses or new britches. Hair wasoften curled or combed.

It may also be worth noting that inthe 19^th and early 20^th Centuries the newly dead,ironically, often looked healthy and robust compared to the dying today, whenmany patients are kept alive until they waste away.

When we look at these images solelyfrom a sociological or historical perspective, we may not necessarily see theiraesthetic attributes. What I find prominent in many is the sublime and tendertreatment given to a very difficult subject when in the hands of a capablephotographer.

Lighting is used in descriptive andoften emotional ways, settings and accompaniments are thoughtful and evenelegant, and many have personal touches. Of course, not all photographers hadthe skill nor the aptitude to do this well, but most seem to have tried.

In this early hand-tinted ambrotypeof a child in a coffin we see that there is no attempt to deny the context,although the clasped hands and added color seem to contradict that.

In this tintype of a young ladylying on a day bed, we see that the photographer has given her cheeks color, anattempt to infer sleep.

In other photographs we see thechild lying on sofas or seated in chairs in homes that seem to be middle class.

Some may be in the photographer’sstudio.

But other photographs show much lessopulence and are obviously taken by a non-professional photographer with anamateur camera for the family record right on the back stoop.

The portraits required availablelight, so the child was often photographed in a rough backyard or driveway.

In spite of the home-spunsurroundings, we see lacy garments, flowers and candles that attest to thesolemnity and concern these impoverished families were still able to achievefor their loved one. I especially appreciate the Coke bottle candle stands hereon the right.

The elaborate care and attention topresentation is clearly seen here inside a modest chapel in Peru.

In the 1880’s in the United Statesespecially, when funerals in general became more elaborate, images were made ofthe family group standing around the casket; first at the gravesite, then bythe 20^th century, in the funeral home.

By the 20^th century, theemphasis shifted from the post mortem portrait to the family group and theirgrief, and to the funeral as a social event.

This seems to be even more dominantin photos I have from Eastern Europe where we often see the whole familygathered around the coffin for the funeral portrait.

In America, the view of thedeceased was no longer close up but evolved to a ¾ view in the casket, then thewhole casket surrounded by flowers. In some, there is no sign of the body atall; just the event with a casket.

By the 1880’s photographic journalsno longer carried articles about photographing the dead, partly becauseprofessionals already knew how to do it, and there was a dwindling desire tobring attention to the practice. Among the last was an 1891 advertisement forthe use of artificial light when photographing the corpse.

However, the practice of postmortem portraiture continues unabated throughout the 20^th and nowthe 21^st centuries, but it is done without advertizing or opendiscussion. The results are shared only among family intimates.

By the middle of the 20^thcentury, professional services were no longer necessary, as anyone could accessand use a small camera, a Polaroid, or more recently, a digital camera. The actof making a remembrance portrait has become a private family act for many.

Many people still want a portraitof a newly lost infant, but are unwilling to ask for such service. Manyphotographers are often unwilling to offer it, let alone actually provide it. Althoughsome believe that photographs of the dead are unhealthy and prolong one’sinability to face grief, other grief professionals and health care workers seethe value of a visual record of such an event, as it may be needed later if theparents need help with closure or accepting their loss. The authors of a 1985pamphlet: “A Most Important Picture: A Very Tender Manual for Taking Picturesof Stillborn Babies and Infants Who Die” from the Centering Corp. of OmahaNebraska, explain:

“Theimportance of pictures: There are four basic reasons for taking pictures ofinfants who have died: A picture helps the family confirm the reality of theirbaby’s life and death. A picture shows them exactly how the baby looked so theydo not have to rely on memory or fantasy. A picture gives them one way to sharetheir baby with other people. A picture may be the only tangible memory oftheir baby.” (Joy Johnson, MarvinJohnson, James H. Cunningham, and Irwin J. Weinfeld)

Even though everybody now has easyaccess through personal digital cameras, some still prefer the services of askilled professional photographer. Today there is a website which featurescontemporary professional post-mortem portrait services made available at nocost to parents who have lost a child: nowilaymedowntosleep.org. NowI Lay Me Down To Sleep specializes in infant bereavement photography.Co-founded in 2005 by Cheryl Haggard, whose fourth child died just six daysafter his birth, and photographer Sandy Puc, the group connects a network ofprofessional photographers, who provide their services free of charge, withparents grieving the loss of a new child. The professional results are far moreemotionally charged, loving and atmospheric than what the layperson wouldlikely capture with their own point-and-shoot camera at such a stressful time.You might also notice that the modern NowILayMeDownToSleep portraits arephotographed in black and white – a format that seems to abstract the contentenough so the image can be seen as more aesthetically acceptable, especiallywhen compared to the stark reality of the color snapshots we just saw in theprevious image.

Post Mortem Portraiture can even bethe subject of art. From The Guardian: "This somber series of portraits taken of people before andafter they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work is by Germanphotographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recordedinterviews in 2003 and 2004 with the subjects in their final days, and revealsmuch about dying - and living. The series is called Life Before Death."

Other works like these amazingportraits from The Travelers by Elizabeth Heyert seem to celebrate life in death. These people are dressed upin their finest for the next life.

The tradition of post mortemportrait photography continues, but it is usually private and personal. Deathphotography can be therapeutic for some, providing a way to face loss and as anaid through one’s own grieving process, and, less so, as a family memorial. Facingthe dead in a photograph may be our last opportunity to face the universal stateof death and not be so frightened by its strangeness.

Post Mortem Portrait Archive: Part Seven

2011-06-26T21:29:00.000-02:30

More From My Post-Mortem Portrait Archive: Part Seven

Here are a few more images from my Post-Mortem Portrait collection. Click on any to enlarge.

This tradition and urge to photograph the dead is not gone. Even though everybody now has easy access through personal digital cameras and cellphones, some still prefer the services of a skilled professional photographer. Today there is a website which features contemporary professional post-mortem portrait services made available to parents who have lost a child: Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep specializes in infant bereavement photography. Co-founded in 2005 by Cheryl Haggard, whose fourth child died just six days after his birth, and photographer Sandy Puc, the group connects a network of professional photographers, who provide their services free of charge, with parents grieving the loss of a new child.

Please note that I retain the copyright for the above photographs and all others from my collection that are featured in this blog. Please do not duplicate or publish without prior written consent. Previous postings on Dark Dissolution that included other images from my Post-Mortem Portrait Archive are: "Post Mortem Portrait Archive, Part Six", "More Scans....", "Morbid Anatomy", "Sleeping Beauties", "Putting the Fun back....", and "Wisconsin Death Trip".

Human Bodies on Display

2011-06-19T13:44:00.030-02:30

Over the past 20-30 years we have been bombarded with exhibitions of dissected human cadavers in exhibition-like contexts. Every large city has been plastered with large posters showing flayed corpses posed in some sort of athletic gesture advertizing "an educational experience" like no other.

Granted, I am fascinated like many others, and agree that it can be an amazingly educational experience, but there are some ethical issues to consider. First and foremost, who were these people? And, is this a truly educational endeavor or simply a money-making enterprise? We have a long history of carnival side-shows with "punks in bottles", mummies, and grotesque human artifacts on display that have nothing to do with science or education, but are only to satisfy our morbid curiosity and eagerness to be grossed out.

Over the years, these side-show and circus exhibits have been toned down or dismantled. Museums have put away their mummies and other human remains, partly out of decorum and respect, partly out of political correctness, and partly for political and cultural reasons.

Vesalius. Click to enlarge.

Gunther von Hagens

Enter German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who has made a life's work out of the process he invented in the late 1970's at the University of Heidelberg: the plastination technique. (left) Dr. von Hagens has steadfastly maintained his aim as being educational and has made it clear that his subjects (he calls them donors) were all people who willingly donated their remains to him and his organization for the purpose of education and science. His Body Worlds exhibitions have been circling the globe for decades now. (video) The sometimes shocking aspect (besides the obvious) is that the bodies are often posed in disarmingly alive postures, performing athletic actions, or with props that speak of the everyday. Some "exploded" views create meat and tissue abstractions, which are at once informative, beautiful and odd. These have historical precedents in the 16th Century drawings of Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), author of De Humani Corpis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), a beautiful and revolutionary Renaissance study of human body.

Click to enlarge.

Dr. von Hagens is also featured in a television series from the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg that centers on anatomy education, using the dissection and anatomizing of cadavers. This first program of the series, Anatomy for Beginners, Part One, (also below) has a good introduction from Dr. von Hagens.

In these dozens of programs, he demonstrates various physiological characteristics of our bodies to a live studio audience. Other series of programs are called Autopsy: Life & Death and Autopsy: Emergency Room. This video excerpt from Anatomy of Movement shows the presenter describing a dissection to the audience while Dr. von Hagens is adroitly cutting away at a hanging cadaver. Obviously shock-value is part of the program's success, but the ability to demonstrate various aspects of our physical machine in such a clear and unambiguous way makes this program one of the most interesting human physiology shows I have ever seen. Highly recommended.

The ethical controversy I first alluded to occurs when we find that there is a competing exhibition of similarly plastinated bodies confusingly called "Bodies: the Exhibition", or "Bodies Revealed", and "Our Body: The Universe Within". They use many of the same advertizing and display techniques seen in the Body Worlds venues. The big difference is that these bodies are all from China and from suspect sources or provenance. ABCNews' program 20/20 produced a major report exposing the "secret trade in Chinese bodies". They went to the plastination labs in China to interview the "Doctors" and found nothing but seedy back-alley sheds with vats of human body parts, and workers ducking for cover. Conflicting testimony and law suits have resulted from the publicity, including accusations of von Hagens' lab being involved in a smear campaign, but the ethical questions remain: Were these bodies from executed Chinese prisoners and the unclaimed poor? Is this enterprise solely a money making enterprise? Are there any redeeming scientific or educational qualities to these exhibitions or are they simply poor imitations of von Hagens' Body Worlds?

Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón, Havana, Cuba

2011-05-17T16:16:00.000-02:30

I went to Cuba in 1976. It was something that only tourists from Canada and Iron Curtain countries were able to do at the time. We stayed at Veradero which was still largely undeveloped, with some of the villas abandoned and still empty since the exodus after the revolution. We visited the Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. It was SPECTACULAR and was the first richly ornate cemetery I had ever seen. Here are just a few examples from my slides of the trip.

The chapel as it looked in 1976, before the influx of tourists.

The chapel in 2006. (photo by Dirk van der Made)

I wish I could go back and rephotograph more of this amazing place. With the saturated blue skies and the lush tropical vegetation, it seemed so alive compared to the grey Paris cemeteries....

Insects and Determining Time of Death

2011-04-27T18:35:00.000-02:30

I am back.....
My sincere apologies for the long absence. Now to get to the meat of things....

I just finished reading an interesting little book called Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death by Jessica Snyder Sachs (Basic Books: New York, 2001). It outlines recent (now 10 year-old) developments in the determination of an accurate time of death compared to what was previously thought. It seems that progressively since the 19th century and earlier, medico-forensic determinations of time of death have been inversely accurate compared to the beliefs of the time. The more we learned about the processes going on within both newly dead and long-term decaying bodies, the less accurate our estimates became because we could no longer depend on the inaccurately definitive assumptions of previous generations. This was very problematic when it came to the identification of missing persons and corroborating or breaking suspects' alibis. Justice was not being served.

This book outlines the history of how forensic science evolved and eventually turned to entomology and botany to increase the tools available to homicide investigators. Although a bit "clinical", I still found it a fascinating read. As a history, it names most of the important scientists and researchers who have lead the way to establish what we now take for granted when we watch a CSI type television program. Among the names featured in the book is Bill Bass (see my entry for June 7, 2010, "The Body Farm") who was one of, if not the first to use actual human cadavers for field study research into insect invasion, long-term decay, and the application and study of environmental and situational controls.

For those interested in the criminalistic side of things, this is a must-read.

In a slightly different vein, I just learned that Dr. Stanley Burns has recently published the third volume of Sleeping Beauties. The first two volumes are long out-of-print and quite valuable. Although this one is of a smaller format, I am eagerly awaiting its arrival. I am sure it will be chock full of those wonderful 19th century post mortem portraits.

In a coming installment, I will post more from my own PM photo collection, so please stay tuned.

Facies Dolorosa

2011-01-30T11:23:00.000-03:30

In 1934, the German diagnostician Prof. Dr. Hans Killian published an amazing book of 64 portraits of his dying patients. The first edition of Facies Dolorosa was printed using the collotype process and is extremely rare and expensive. Subsequent editions printed in half-tone are sometimes found, although still rare and valuable.

These portraits were seen as a scientific work of empirical observation; a theory Dr. Killian was propounding whereby the underlying diagnosis of a person's illness could be seen written in the tensions and expressions on their faces. In spite of being clinical in intent and approach, there is nevertheless an amazing terrible beauty in these faces. Shot close up and obliquely, the portraits resonate with an odd tension between the intimate and the dispassionate.

Here are few examples from this amazing book. Two patients are shown pre- and post-mortem.

Funny Tombstones

2010-12-29T12:27:00.000-03:30

To end the first year of this blog, I am presenting a series of mainly "borrowed" images of silly tombstones that are supposed to actually exist. Of course, sometimes the humour is based on our language and how we interpret people's names. But many are created by families with a real sense of humour. I wonder if the deceased made it clear in their will that these are the memorials that they wanted over their grave in perpetuity?

Enjoy. Wishing you well for the New Year.....

I don't know him.....

Over the Edge - humor and death

2010-12-23T11:01:00.000-03:30

Just in time for the solstice season, I will digress and talk about "gallows humour".

Death cannot exist without humour. How else could people cope with probably the most traumatic of life's processes? Dark fatalistic humour contrasts with the seemingly innocent references to death as a character, a cartoon figure that we all love to laugh about, yet fear.

Taxidermy is the first victim to the twisted humour of many because it is such an easy stand-in for our own fragile mortality.

Although it can go so terribly wrong, it can also be quite interesting and even elegant: like this computer mouse.

Or it can be silly and even creepy:

And creepier still, when you create a reversable dog/cat. Who would actually want this???

[Click on the image below to animate it.]

See how far it can go when taxidermy is used to sell beer bottles at exorbitant prices.

So we try to deal with death in ways that are irreverent, silly and macabre. But does this really help us in the long run? Even the origins of childhood's animation empire, Disney, used death in an irreverent and humorous way. Here's a video of Walt Disney's La Danza Macabra: The Skeleton Dance from 1929.

A single cartoon image is still probably the best way to address mortality in funny yet pithy ways. Some of my favourite Bizarro cartoons over the years have been about death. The following are but a few examples, plus others from various cartoonists. [Please forgive me if I do not have the right to show these here. They can be removed immediately upon request.]

Happy Holidays, everyone. Have a safe and Joyous New Year, too.

Cemeteries in Paris

2010-11-07T17:57:00.000-03:30

After a break, I am back to show you some views taken last summer at three of the main cemeteries in Paris: Père Lachaise, Montmartre and Montparnasse. Each walled urban cemetery offers many interesting walks to take, and amazing things to find. It would be wonderful to explore these places at dusk, or even in the rain. Each has a who's who of notables interred within their confines, some offering maps and signs to find their plots.

It was interesting, especially at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise; officially, cimetière de l'Est, to see tourists with a checklist of graves to find and visit, from Frédéric Chopin and Oscar Wilde to Jim Morrison (below)....

...including Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir....

The darker less traveled corners are often the most interesting, with decay and dissolution everywhere.

Even a stone cutter was there to add a name and date to a marker.

Digital Death

2010-09-30T18:20:00.001-02:30

On May 20th, 2010, it was the first Digital Death Day. A conference was held in California to look at the problems associated with our digital identity once we die. What happens to all of our digital data, internet presence, personal blogs, tweets, etc. once we are gone? Where does it end up? How long does it survive without our continuing on-line presence. A website that addresses many of these questions and more is The Digital Beyond. Here we can read editorials and discussions of how our digital identity will be archived, memorialized, or deleted, depending on the context or site. What about our photos, videos, blog entries? Our PayPal, e-mail, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Second Life, and WorldofWarcraft presences? Does our social networking page survive after our death? Does it continue to send out announcements? Accept comments?

Historically we have always been able to read the journals and diaries of long dead ancestors; but have we made it impossible for our great-grandchildren to read our musings, look at our photographs, or listen to our voices by the obsolescence of an ever-evolving internet? In Life After Death, in Digital Form, Robert Roper discusses these issues at Obit. There are huge philosophical and social questions that arise when we consider our personal on-line documents and who should have access to them. Does our family need to continue getting reminders or e-mails as if we were still sending tweets? Does our Facebook page need to continue accepting posts from friends and sending updates as to our non-activity?

Another article which looks at this issue is BBC News: Virtual Life after Death.

I have no intention of addressing this issue here, as there are many others who have posted more informed views on this topic. But it is never too late to start thinking about what YOU would want done with your links, passwords, accounts, blogs, slide-shows and portfolios, etc. Why die twice?

Deathmasks

2010-09-05T20:55:00.001-02:30

It was the tradition for many centuries for death masks to be made of monarchs, artists and politicians in the time directly after their demise.

One of the most extensive on-line sites on deathmasks is Undying Faces. Well worth a look.

Here are some deathmasks of some famous Soviet personalities by sculptor Sergei Merkulov.

Above: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924)

The sister of Lenin.

Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife.

Chkalov, the famous Soviet aviator.

Gorky, the famous Soviet writer.

Mayakovsky, the famous Soviet poet.

Frunze, on of the best Soviet commander-in-chiefs of the civil war (1918—1922).

Eizeinshtein, the world-wide famous Soviet movie producer.

This YouTube video with music shows many more non-Soviet masks.

Other websites which feature deathmasks include:

Death Masks of the Famous

20 Death Masks Of Famous People

John Dillinger

Post Mortem Portrait Archive, Part Six

2010-07-31T15:23:00.000-02:30

More From My Post-Mortem Portrait Archive:

Once again it is time to present a few more images from my Post Mortem Portrait collection. These are some wonderful examples of amateur, or non-studio portraits. Again, almost all of these portraits are of children, one of the most common forms of this kind of memorial photography. You will see that many are photographed at home or in the family's back yard. Household furniture is often seen as part of the set-up or back-drop. Some even include a family pet hanging around in the background.

The last two subjects are obviously much more recent than the previous twelve, which are circa 19th or early 20th century. The predominance of a professional studio portrait was greatly diminished by the mid-20th century and the number of amateur photographs increased as the practice became more private and less acceptable for a professional photographer or studio to advertise or even do. The improvements in photographic technology also made it easier for family members to photograph their loved ones, especially with the advent of the snapshot camera, then the Polaroid, and now the digital camera. The body in its casket was no longer being "waked" at home, so the setting is now usually the funeral home or church.

Previous postings on Dark Dissolution that included other images from my Post Mortem Portrait Archive are: "More Scans....", "Morbid Anatomy", "Sleeping Beauties", "Putting the Fun back....", and "Wisconsin Death Trip".

I will post more later, but with a different emphasis; maybe the props used, the clothing, or the setting....

Death Reference Desk - Blog

2010-07-20T13:20:00.000-02:30

Death Reference Desk

I came across this amazing reference blog also devoted to DEATH.
It features some great entries and links. It is just over a year old, and very ambitious.
Here's one of thier opening images...my sentiments, exactly.

This summer is c-r-a-z-y, so I apologize for posting this cop-out page, but the Death Reference Desk should easily keep your interest piqued until I get back...

Have a nice summer .... you never know if it will be your last .... :-)

How Much is Your Dead Body Worth?

2010-07-04T16:32:00.003-02:30

In 1998 Hilary Mantel published a great novel based on the life and times of 18th Century Scottishsurgeon John Hunter and his anatomist brother William. Hunter was responsible for the original huge collection of pathological specimens now housed at the Hunterian Museumat the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The surgeon was keen to obtain specimensof any and every physiological wonder he could find. In Mantel’s The Giant, O’Brien, in 1782 wefind that Hunter was pursuing the dying 7 foot 7 inch tall Irish giant, Charles O’Brien (Bryne)in order to obtain his skeleton for his collection. He plied the unwillingO’Brien with promises of a cash advance for his eventual corpse. (see his skeleton in the case: photo at right)

The novel is one of my favorites.

This book paints a detailedpicture of the intrigue and almost desperation that was prevalent during thesetimes, when medical science was struggling to advance, but access to human cadaverswas scarce. It also describes the intrigue and illegal activity that supportedthe men of medicine in the 18th and 19th centuries. Therewas a critical shortage of human cadavers for teaching and research before theAnatomy Act of 1832 opened thepoorhouse doors to give access to those too poor to afford a proper burial. Until then, the few legal bodies that were available from hanged criminals werenot enough for the growing number of anatomy schools. Soon the Resurrection Men were able to fill the void bygrave robbing and body snatching forquick cash. William Burke and William Hare didn’t take long to evolve into murderers when they realized how easy it wasto cash in by selling cadavers to Dr. Robert Knox, an ambitious Edinburghanatomist. In 1828, after 16 murders over an 11-month period, they were caughtand Burke was hanged AND anatomized. The verb to be burked or burking enteredthe English language. Director John Landis is about to complete a new film(2010) — Burke and Hare,one of many such films made about them over the years.

I found a recent documentaryfilm about body snatching that is strangely reminiscent of a 1987 episode, “Body Banks”, of the quirky sci-fi television show Max Headroom.The documentary by the BBC’s Horizon examines the high monetary value of the humanremains needed for research, testing, study, and medical transplant and how thisresults in the illicit trafficking of such remains.

This is all very different fromthe live organ donations that are much more regulated and controlled by thein-hospital context in which they are harvested. See Organ Donation and Transplantation from the Encyclopedia of Death and Dying website.

BBC/Horizon promotionaltext for the documentary: How Much is Your Dead Body Worth?

When veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke died in 2004 few suspected that he was yetto uncover his greatest story. What happened to his body as it lay in a funeralhome would reveal a story of modern day grave robbery and helped smash abody-snatching ring that had made millions of dollars by chopping up andselling-off over 1000 bodies. Dead bodies have become big business. Each yearmillions of people’s lives are improved by the use of tissue from the dead.Bodies are used to supply spare parts, and for surgeons to practice on. Horizoninvestigates the medical revolution that has created an almost insatiabledemand for body parts and uncovers the growing industry and grisly black marketthat supplies human bodies for a price.

Watch it in its entirety atTop Documentary Films.
How Much Is Your Dead Body Worth? BBC-UK 49:00 min

***WARNING – ContainsScenes Of Human Dissection and Human Body Parts***
… well worth the watch, though.

Jack Burman: The Dead

2010-07-01T12:34:00.000-02:30

Canadian photographer Jack Burman's long awaited book of post mortem portraits, The Dead, is finally here. The Magenta Foundation (Toronto) has published a fine collection of Burman's amazing photographs in three forms: the hardcover edition, hardcover edition in a wooden box, and the deluxe boxed edition with a signed original print.

Martha Hanna (director of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography) provided a brief introduction, and Robert Enright interviewed Burman for the text. Burman's work spans decades of searching for the humanity of human remains from sites far away from battlefields and streets. He forces us to come face to face with individuals, with the actual dead, not just symbols of the dead. He explores the collections of prepared medical specimens in Latin American and European medical museums.

The wooden box encasing the book is rough, unfinished, except for a transparent gray stain. Its halves fit together tightly, held fast with rare earth magnets, so there is a brief struggle as you attempt to access the book within. The black and white print included in the deluxe edition is small (5.5 inches by 6.5 inches on 10.25 by 7.25 paper) in an edition of 100. It is of a richly detailed, articulated crouching human skeleton entitled Germany #49 (Catatonic Man), 2009.

Although I've seen this kind of subject before (such as in Rosamond Purcell and Stephen Jay Gould's Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors), many images were a surprise, both in their elegance and their visceral power. The reproduction quality is excellent in spite of the smallish format of the book it self. The size may actually contribute to its intimacy rather than sensationalize its content. I highly recommend this book for the discerning collector of all things macabre.

Victorian Mourning Attire

2010-06-19T17:33:00.003-02:30

We have long associated black clothing with funerals and mourning. This tradition has a long history, but the most complex social period in the West seems to have been Victorian. In the 19th century and early 20th, formal signs of mourning were outwardly displayed in the clothing one wore, sometimes for extended periods of time. Not like the one-day garb we wear at contemporary funerals, but as part of one’s everyday life for weeks, months, or, as in the case of good old Queen Vic herself, years.

Tracy Chevalier writes on her site: “Mourning clothes were a family’s outward display of their inner feelings. The rules for who wore what and for how long were complicated, and were outlined in popular journals or household manuals such as The Queen and Cassell’s – both very popular among Victorian housewives. They gave copious instructions about appropriate mourning etiquette. If your second cousin died and you wanted to know what sort of mourning clothes you should wear and for how long, you consulted The Queen or Cassell’s or other manuals.

        For deepest mourning clothes wereto be black, symbolic of spiritual darkness. Dresses for deepest mourning wereusually made of non-reflective paramatta silk or the cheaper bombazine – manyof the widows in Dickens’ novels wore bombazine. Dresses were trimmed withcrape, a hard, scratchy silk with a peculiar crimped appearance produced byheat. Crape is particularly associated with mourning because it doesn’t combinewell with any other clothing – you can’t wear velvet or satin or lace orembroidery with it. After a specified period the crape could be removed – thiswas called slighting the mourning. The color of cloth lightened asmourning went on, to grey, mauve, and white – called half-mourning. Jewelry waslimited to jet, a hard, black coal-like material sometimes combined with wovenhair of the deceased.
        Men had it easy – they simply wore their usual dark suits along with black gloves, hatbands and cravats. Children were not expected to wear mourning clothes, though girls sometimes wore white dresses.
        The length of mourning depended onyour relationship to the deceased. The different periods of mourning dictatedby society were expected to reflect your natural period of grief. Widows wereexpected to wear full mourning for two years. Everyone else presumably sufferedless – for children mourning parents or vice versa the period of time was oneyear, for grandparents and siblings six months, for aunts and uncles twomonths, for great uncles and aunts six weeks, for first cousins four weeks.”

The photographs on this page are from my collection andclearly show such truly elegant fashions.

Other sites to explore:

Morbid Outlook’s Fashion History: Victorian Mourning Garb

An article on Mourning Fashion History by Pauline Weston Thomas for Fashion-Era.com

And from a site with musical accompaniment: The Basics of Mourning – Victorian Style.

The Body Farm

2010-06-07T17:50:00.007-02:30

•••••••••••••
WARNING
•••••••••••••

Today, this Page contains GRAPHIC photographs of the DEAD.

Proceed only with the understanding that you may be disturbed.

• • • • • ••••• • ••••• • • • • •

"A body farm is a research facility where human decomposition can be studied in a variety of settings. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the decomposition process, permitting the development of techniques for extracting information (such as the timing and circumstances of death) from human remains. Body farm research is particularly important within forensic anthropology and related disciplines, and has applications in the fields of law enforcement and forensic science. Four such facilities exist in the United States." (from Wikipedia: link)

The original body farm was at the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility near Knoxville, TN, started by Dr. Bill Bass in 1981. A great article on Dr. Bass can be found at damninteresting.com.

Forensic anthropologist Bill Bass, left, and his co-author, Jon Jefferson, examine a decaying corpse on the Body Farm.
Picture: Caroline Overington

The video below gives you a good introduction to the facility and its history by Dr. Bass, himself.

Even National Geographic has produced a short video on Dr. Bass's work. Their version (with lots of camera jiggle effects) is less graphic than the videos provided below, but it gives a good overview of the facility. See it at this link.

For a more graphic and detailed account of the Body Farm, also presented by Dr. Bass, see the three parts below. These are more graphic, so advanced warning is given....Viewer Beware!

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Of course with such a vivid concept of death and decay, it didn't take long for artists and writers to reference the facility within their work. First we find crime mystery writers using it as a backdrop for their stories and characters' lives. See Patricia Cornwell's The Body Farm, and of course Kathy Reichs' character, Dr. Temperance Brennan, who sometimes references the body farm in Reichs' novels (but not so much in the TV series, Bones). The author, herself, has a working knowledge of the body farm, as Dr. Reichs is one of only eighty-two forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. Even Dr. Bass himself, along with his colleague Jon Jefferson, have collaboratively written crime mystery novels under the pen name Jefferson Bass. Their site also has links to more videos about the body farm.

One visual artist who has worked within the fence line of the body farm is photographer Sally Mann. Her book What Remains examines the mortality and decay of her family dog, the occupants of the body farm, and a fatal incident occurring near her home. A great documentary film was made in 2005 while she produced many of the images within her wonderful book. It is also entitled What Remains. Mann used the archaic 19th century collodion wet plate process in order to create these images on glass plates with a large format view camera. These are a few examples from her book:

(Above three images: copyright Sally Mann. Thanks in advance for their use here.)

The visual and almost tactile qualities of this old analogue process, with all its flaws and apparent image decay, seem well suited to documenting the dark mood and atmosphere of the body farm and its inhabitants, especially in the hands of an artist like Sally Mann.

Hearse Evolution

2010-05-28T14:12:00.003-02:30

The hearse has evolved from the simple hand-cart or ox-cart which moved bodies to the graveyard or charnel house in centuries past. It was not originally used in a ceremonial fashion, but was a necessary function of cleaning up the city, especially during the Great Plague.

The hearse eventually evolved into an elaborately decorated carriage which gave a funeral procession some gravity and the deceased some sense of notoriety. In most cases it was the most luxurious vehicle that the deceased would have ever traveled in. Of course, the early versions were horse drawn carriages with decorations that migrated from the carriage to the horses and drivers themselves.

When the automobile entered the scene, the carriage style remained the same, but with a driver and engine stuck on the front. This 1919 Sayers and Scovill Hearse was built by the S&S Coach Company. This company has a history that dates back to 1876 and continues into modern times as a manufacturer of hearses and limousines. This 1919 Sayers & Scovill Hearse has a carrying compartment that is completely hand carved. This car has been restored to its original condition after having traveled only 19,000 miles while the car was in service.

Luxury and style were paramount. Many were over the top when it came to making an impression on the attending mourners.

Here's an odd one. This 1941 Cadillac cathedral window hearse is one of the ONLY surviving J.C. Little built hearses in existence. John Little built his coaches out of a small shop in Ontario, Canada.

From my own archive, I have some old copy negatives from a funeral home in central Canada. The hearses in the photos evolved as did the family cars of the day.

ca 1910 -- Winnipeg, Manitoba

ca 1940's -- Winnipeg, Manitoba

ca 1954 -- Winnipeg, Manitoba

I also bought a pair of great car models of the classic North American designs of the 20th century. A Cadillac hearse from 1938 and another Caddie from around 1950. Lots of fun. Complete with little empty caskets and the folding casket truck they ride on. The hood and all doors open. From a low camera angle, the car can be made to look fairly convincing.

Here's a brief video about the modern luxury (?) funeral coach and its production:

A contemporary British funeral coach fleet may look like this:

....but may still offer a traditional horse drawn hearse like this:

In Japan, the Tokyo-style hearse with a Buddhist-style temple-back is one of the many local types of funeral coaches used today.

A fun website which shows how a horse-drawn carriage hearse is built as a working and accurate Halloween prop, is HERE. Other great Hearse sites include: The Classic Hearse Register, Bennett Funeral Coaches (photo album), and a seven page article on How Stuff Works. A good collection of hearse photos can be found HERE.

Bones - Bones - Bones - For Art's Sake

2010-05-13T11:07:00.007-02:30

Bones have been used decoratively since prehistoric times. The use of a human bone is usually linked to a ceremonial connection with the dead rather than just a pragmatic use of a hard material.

I've posted images of carved Tibetan skulls here before. These religious/ceremonial treatments are many and varied, so I won't go into that here. Instead, I want to concentrate on bones manipulated for purely aesthetic reasons, even if they are located in a religious context (as in a church or catacomb).

One of the older forms of decoration with bones could be the ossuaries and arranged catacombs found throughout the world. They seem to be a relatively recent phenomenon, a solution to overcrowded grave sites or burial vaults within the last few centuries. The Paris Catacombs are probably the most well known.

Quarries under the city of Paris were used to store the bones removed from overcrowded surface cemeteries in the 18th century. Once moved there, the bones were arranged into patterns, retaining walls, and displays complete with text plaques. These arrangements were more for expediency and tidiness than for some greater aesthetic endeavor. The Viscount of Thury, the quarries' general inspector from 1808 to 1831, was in charge of giving these anonymous residents a dark and gloomy decorum. This Daily Motion site has some good video, presented in French. A really good first hand description by Jeff Belanger can be found here in English. For visitor information go to the official (but drab) Paris Catacomb website. You can also take a virtual tour here.

One of the most well known decorative sites is the Sedlec Ossuary (a.k.a. Kostnice), a small Christian chapel decorated with human bones. It's located in Sedlec, a suburb in the outskirts of the Czech town Kutna Hora. See the Official Sedlec website or go to Frisco Ramirez's site, where there is a great collection of images and information. There are also more photographs on this other site.

Another ossuary associated with the church is Santa Maria della Concezione in Rome, where the crypts of Capuchin monks are decorated with the bones of over 4000 friars. This site has some photos, too.

The Atlas Obscura has a page with links to many more of these kind of sites. Well worth the exploration.

Contemporary artists who use human skeletal remains in their art are doing so fully aware that the knowledge of the bones being human makes a huge difference in how viewers respond to an art work. A good example is the sculptural work of Wayne M. Belger. He has used the human skulls to make elaborate, bejeweled, and fully operational pin-hole cameras. The idea of reactivating the third eye of a skull to create a photographic image is a powerful allusion.

Of course the most ostentatious example of a human skull used in an artwork is Damian Hurst's 2007 For The Love of God, a £50 million ($100 M) encrustation with 8601 diamonds set in platinum on an 18th Century human skull. The large diamond on the forehead is worth £4 million by itself.

What can one say.... For reviews and more information go to these links: White Cube, Mail Online, and Reuters. Or watch this video:

Video: Damien Hirst £50m Diamond Skull - Art - UK - Dailymotion

When I was in New York in 2007, I came across a small exhibition in Chelsea which included a series of similarly treated skulls, but from the 1980's. So Mr. Hurst was certainly not the first to go this route; he just carried it to the extreme. These skulls were half-covered with semi-precious stone, ball bearings, diodes, coral, and with glass eyes. Unfortunately I don't remember whose work this is. (Can anyone help me?) There were other skull and bone related pieces in the exhibition, but they were bronze casts or drawings.

This artist (below) who arranges bones into provocative assemblages is also unknown to me. (I can't find the name associated with these images ... anyone??) The politicized nature of this work makes it seem fairly recent. I am not sure that they are real bone or just casts, but the effect is the same here in reproduction. Being in front of the actual pieces to see if they were real human bone would take the work to another level.

These examples have a precedent from the 1930's, a Surrealist piece by Wolfgang Paalen. "The surrealist use of bones as material in connection with war and destruction becomes evident in Wolfgang Paalen's 1938 bone pistol Le Genie de l'Espece, dating from the eve of the Second World War (see below). In this work, chicken bones simulate the shape of the deadly weapon in the moulded trough of a velvet-lined pistol casket. Cause and effect seem to be coalesced in a matrix - the bones, arranged as a fantastic firearm, present death as the deliberate intention and inevitable result of the use of weaponry and are thus meant as an unmistakable warning of conflict resolution by force." [text by Sebastian Hackenschmidt from Image & Narrative, Issue 13, Nov. 2005; image © Stiftung Wolfgang und Isabel Paalen, Mexico]

If you are an aspiring bone artist, where can one find human bones? I mean legally...
EBay professes to not allow the sale of human parts, yet has a fair amount of human bones for sale, as long as they are "for study", or they originate "from medical/scientific collections". A commercial source outside of the expensive scientific/medical supply world is The Bone Room.

I was quite disturbed, however to see the guys in the TV show, Mythbusters making test heads cast in ballistic gelatin with real human skulls inside in order to see if everything shattered on impact when frozen with liquid nitrogen as in a popular movie. (see clip: Shattering Heads at the bottom of the list) Using human bones for fine art, memorials, or for medical or scientific study is one thing, but by being for entertainment, this seems to have crossed a line that I am not willing to cross.

Mummy's Day

2010-05-09T12:42:00.004-02:30

Today, on Mothers' Day, I thought I would explore mummies, both the traditional Egyptian type, and the naturally mummified type. There is a big difference between the ceremonial treatment of the dead through religious mummification ceremonies and the natural processes that can occur in arid or accidental situations. A case in point might be the child mummies of Peru and Chile or, in a sub category of inadvertent cadaver preservation, the bog people (and animals) found in Northwestern Europe, Britain and Ireland.

Let's start with a pair of 19th century albumen photographs taken of Ramses I, which I purchased on eBay. This mummy was stolen by grave robbers and brought to North America around 1860. It ended up in in the Niagara Museum and Daredevil Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls, Ontario for 130 years before going to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, then in 2003, back to Egypt at the Luxor Museum. These photographs seem to have been made very near the time of discovery, since the mummy looks "fresh" and undisturbed. [click on image to enlarge]

When you compare these to a more contemporary image likely made at the Niagara Museum, there is certainly evidence that the body had been repaired or "retouched", to say the least.

In Chile and Peru and along the Andes, are found mummies of usually sacrificial offerings, often children, nestled high on mountaintops or in dry caves. Wrapped in fabrics, they are naturally dessicated and preserved with astounding naturalness. While the Egyptian mummies were eviscerated and embalmed in a warm climate, the Andean mummies were simply placed in a rocky cave to protect them from scavengers. The cold, arid mountaintop did the rest. The 15-year old "Llullaillaco Maiden" was sacrificed more than 500 years ago along with two other children on top of Mt. Llullaillaco in northern Argentina, at 22,000 feet.

The Chachapoya mummies of Peru were found in caves and are also over 500 years old (above, right).

Northwestern Europe, the British Isles and Ireland are known for their extensive peat bogs. When peat was being harvested, many cadavers and artifacts were found deep within the layers of old peat. Organic material was especially well preserved, one could say pickled. Leather, fabric, wood, animals, and people were unearthed and placed in collections throughout the region. An extensive and wonderful website about the bog people can be found HERE.

In many cases there is evidence of human sacrifice or simply murder.

Left, is the preserved corpse of the Tollund Man, with the noose used to hang him still around his neck. Many were strangled, but one unfortunate man was killed by at least three different means. The nature of his death was violent, perhaps ritualistic; after a last meal of charred bread, Lindow Man was strangled, hit on the head, and his throat was cut.

There are many examples of deliberate human preservation, such as the extensive embalming and restoration performed on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Evita Peron. However, few are as grotesque as the preservation of Julia Pastrana (b. 1834), a Mexican First Nations circus performer with hypertrichosis. Theodor Lent managed her and eventually married her. During a tour in Moscow in 1860, Pastrana gave birth to a baby with features similar to her own. The child survived only two days, and Pastrana died of post-birth complications five days later. Lent then had his wife and son mummified and displayed them in a glass cabinet. A detailed essay on her life and horrific after-life can be found at The Human Marvels.

The Undertakers' Supply Co. Catalog

2010-04-27T15:13:00.006-02:30

Specialty trades can be mysterious enough without trying to understand the tools they use, the supplies they go through, and the way they communicate these needs to each other. Jargon meant to be exclusive to those in the know, is at times disconcerting to the uninitiated. For example, I have an empty bottle of embalming fluid labeled Frigid Jr. with a picture of a fat healthy smiling baby on it. It is supposed to be specially formulated for babies .... what can I say?

I managed to find a ca 1920 copy of the Undertakers' Supply Co. Catalog. (I've depended on eBay for a long time...) The catalog lists everything an embalmer could possibly need as well as furnishings for the funeral service and viewing. There is a section on special cases, diseases, and conditions that require special treatment, precautions, or materials. Here are a few pages which give one an idea of what early morticians and undertakers were shopping for.

[for larger views, click on the image]

BlackFlash Magazine

2010-04-18T16:59:00.007-02:30

Volume 26.1, 2008 issue of BlackFlash Magazine, a photo, art, and theory magazine from Saskatoon, SK, Canada, featured my new suite of prints in their Death Issue. Here are most of the images or page spreads that were created for this project. For the first time in my art practice, I used appropriated images scanned from my own collections. You may recognize the casket photos from an earlier blog entry. Included in this suite was a poignant excerpt from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, a must-read for all literary driven thanatophiles. A good on-line full text source is here.

These passports are from all over (Turkey, Argentina, Canada, Italy) and include my intrepid traveling aunt and my own taxi license from when I was a young university student.

These glass negatives are from a junk shop located in Butte, Montana. I was especially attracted to the damaged ones, although I also obtained a collection of amazing portraits from the late 19th to early 20th century.

This page of old studio photographs with the empty portrait settings were made from scans of vintage prints and tintypes where I digitally removed the sitter; their absence being a poignant reminder of loss and fading memory.

The above grid is made up of images from my collection of port mortem portraits of young children that I am building. You will see (and have seen) selections from this collections periodically on this blog.

And finally, this page spread of skulls was gleaned from the internet and represents a wide range of individuals. What I find especially interesting, is that they all seem to maintain their own identity and even personality. The numbers alone allude to our uncountable predecessors and the nameless faces that once were.

Japanese Death Poems

2010-04-04T16:18:00.004-02:30

I have a wonderful book of Japanese Haiku called Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. compiled by Yoel Hoffmann (Chas. A. Tuttle Pub. Co. Inc. 1986)

Here are a few poignant examples:

RANGAI (d. 1845, aged 75)

I wish to die Fuji-no-yama

a sudden death with eyes minagara shitaki

fixed on Mount Fuji. tonshi kana

NANDAI (d. 1817, aged 31)

Since time began Kanete naki

the dead alone know peace. mi koso yasukere

Life is but melting snow. yuki no michi

KYO'ON (d. 1749, aged 63)

A last fart: Yume no ha ka

are these the leaves chiru sharakusashi

of my dream, vainly falling? saigo no he

KASENJO (d. 1776, aged 62)

Depths of cold Okusoko no

unfathomable shirenu samusa ya

ocean roar. umi no oto

SENCHOJO (d. 1802)

I cup my ears Unohana ni

among the deutzia lest I fail kikisokonawaji

to hear the cuckoo. hototogisu

TOYOKUNI (d. 1825)

Is it like Yakifude no

a charcoal sketch— mama ka oboro ni

a hazy shadow? kagebōshi

BOKUSUI (d. 1914, aged 40)

A parting word? Jisei nado

The melting snow zansetsu ni ka mo

is odorless. nakarikeri

TOKO (d. 1795, aged 85)

Death poems             Jisei to wa
are mere delusion—                   sunawachi mayoi
death is death.                             tada shinan

The Zen of death is a very different way of looking at the issue of life and its final chapter .... one that I am not really very well versed in. I have always come at it from a physiological/biological point of view; not a very comforting stance. I appreciate the poetic but concrete reality of how these monks address the issue. Maybe that is why I like the poems with their pragmatic but dark nihilistic view. (like the last one, above)

Although not a haiku, this poem by Moriya Sen'an (d. 1838) showed an expectation of an entertaining afterlife:

Bury me when I die Ware shinaba

beneath a wine barrel sakaya no kame no

in a tavern. shita ni ikeyo

With luck moshi ya shizuku no

the cask will leak. moriyasennan

And finally, Death, with calligraphy by Japanese Zen master Hakuin (1685-1768). The poem is written above the character (shi, death), as below:

Wakaishu ya

shinu ga iya nara

ima shiniyare

hito-tabi shineba

mō shinanu zo ya

Oh young folk—
if you fear death,
die now!
Having died once
you won't die again.

Murder Miniatures

2010-04-03T12:31:00.001-02:30

Scenes of murder, mayhem, and doll furniture..........

The incredibly detailed miniature dioramas of Franses Glessner Lee are featured in a book called The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (essay and photos by Corinne May Botz), New York: The Monacelli Press, 2004. Lee, a master criminal investigator, a grandmother, and founder of the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936, was also captain in the New Hampshire police. In the 1940's and 50's she built doll house sized crime scenes based on real cases in order to train detectives to assess visual evidence.

Still used in forensic training today, the book contains wonderfully detailed images of the eighteen Nutshell dioramas that were painstaking built by Lee. The window shades work, the newspaper has text on it, the pencils write, all at a scale of 1:12. Everything is there: the furnishings, wallpaper, carpets, clothing, blood stains, and spent cartridge casings. She made all the clothing and even hand-knit a victim's underwear using thread and straight pins.

The book includes annotations, diagrams, details and clues that you, the reader, use to trace and understand the actual events depicted by the model. Some details and answers are withheld, as these dioramas are still used by the police for training.

Death by misadventure has spawned a whole series of books and websites that border on what one might call trauma-porn. Grotesque images "borrowed" from police files of gunshot head-wounds, major physical trauma, etc. are not something that has any redeeming aesthetic qualities.

We sometimes find re-published collections of crime-scene photographs usually compiled by law enforcement officials as a record of cases they were involved in from before the advent of databases and officially organized forensic records. Many detectives used photography as a personal notational record, or maybe a perversely morbid scrapbook. Some of these are fascinating, although sobering when we face actual images of the fragility of the human body or the outcome of the dark side of human violence.

The use of photography as a forensic tool began with the famous Alphonse Bertillon, a late 19th, early 20th C. French police officer and biometrics researcher who created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals. Before that time, criminals could only be identified based on unreliable eyewitness accounts. The method was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting, but his other contributions like the mug shot and the systematization of crime-scene photography remain in place to this day. [text from wikipedia]

Fine Art Photography and the Dead

2010-03-27T15:21:00.019-02:30

•••••••••••••
WARNING
•••••••••••••

Today, this Page contains GRAPHIC photographs of the DEAD.

Proceed only with the understanding that you may be disturbed.

• • • • • ••••• • ••••• • • • • •

When we think of the visual arts, we don't always envision the dead, other than in a metaphorical or symbolic way. Without going into the history of drawn, painted, and sculpted depictions (Goya et al), there are visual artists, however, who include the dead in their work, the most (in)famous photographers being Joel-Peter Witkin and Andrés Serrano, among others. These photographers who utilize the human cadaver in the name of art, can sometimes provide us with powerful insights into our own mortality and corporeal fragility, not to mention our fears and prejudices.

One can associate Joel-Peter Witkin's work with a Gothic look at art history and human sexuality, often conflated with the body and its distorted or discarded parts. Sometimes Romantic, often disturbing, always provocative, Witkin's work examines our reluctance to associate life, death, art, deformities, sex and religion together in one image.

Andrés Serrano, on the other hand, photographs the dead with no pretense at making it palatable, other than to shield the individual from revealing their identity. His subjects include the tragically dead, accident and murder victims, and the unclaimed. He examines the details, seemingly to allow us to look for clues of their demise in their lips, fingernails, skin, and expression in their eyes.

Other photographers who have delved into the literal realm of human death include Jack Berman. Berman's photographs from time in Latin America record medical specimens, body fragments, and portraits, but also show us an aesthetic attachment to fine art traditions. See an on-line portfolio of his Last Rites in Canadian Art Magazine. <<NEW>> On June 8, 2010, The National Post published an article about Berman and his work. Also see my July 1st, 2010 entry on Berman's new book.

Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta recorded interviews with their subjects in their final days, revealing much about dying - and living. He made close-up portraits showing them in both life and death. A powerful body of work ensued. “People are almost always pretending something, but these people had lost that need,” Mr. Schels told the Guardian. “I felt it enabled me as a photographer to get as close as it’s possible to get to the core of a person; when you’re facing the end, everything that’s not real is stripped away. You’re the most real you’ll ever be, more real than you’ve ever been before.”

To see more of his amazing collection of portraits go to the Guardian's pages.

Morbid Anantomy

2010-03-26T10:56:00.007-02:30

I highly recommend a look at a fantastic weblog where the topics fall into the same dark sphere as mine: Morbid Anatomy.

Run by a Brooklyn graphic designer since 2007, it is a great list of goings-on in the greater NYC area and the world at large. It includes a long list of great on-line exhibitions, anatomical links and other website references, a Morbid Anatomy Bookstore, and much more. It is hard to resist exploring this site and its amazing links for hours at a time.... Morbid Anatomy's Flicker page is an FANTASTIC collection of images previously featured in the weblog.

Another on-line set of post-mortem portrait photographs can be found on the Flicker page of The Post Mortem Archive. Not many, but nice examples.

More From My Post-Mortem Portrait Archive:
From my postmortem collection, these fine examples illustrate a variety of fascinating styles used in this portrait tradition. Today I continue to feature a selection from my own physical archive. This weblog will be the only on-line resource for these images.

From the opulence and high-style of the late nineteenth century, we move to a poignant backyard snapshot from the early twentieth century. In all these cases, it is evident that the photograph was taken when the deceased was still at home. It is only later in the early 20th C that we begin to see portraits made at funeral homes. (see last photo, below)

This collection has grown to 230 images, most of which are from the 19th Century. I will continue to post examples here, but I would also like to feature more books from my library as well. Any suggestions from you? Please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks.

Motorcycle Funerals

2010-03-15T20:54:00.001-02:30

While I driving around in the UK at the end of February, I didn't see any motorcycle funerals. Too wet, I suppose. But this site illustrates that the motorcycle hearse has been available to UK bikers for over 22 years. At www.motorcyclefunerals.com Managing Director Rev. Paul Sinclair believes we should reflect people's lifestyles in their funerals.

Although my own photographic/art practice is focused on old, decrepit cemeteries and related themes, I know there is a world of current funerary practice out there that would be fascinating to the sociologist, cultural anthropologist, or historian. I suppose I don't pursue that avenue of exploration because of a reticence to intrude on people's privacy during difficult times. I am more interested in the decaying visual remains of a Gothic Victorian past; when death, funerals, and memorials were a bigger part of life; when people participated in an overtly fashionable act of mourning.

A good book about this glorious past is James Stevens Curl's The Victorian Celebration of Death. [Phoenix Mill (UK): Sutton Publishing Ltd. 2000] This is a well researched history (PhD dissertation) of 19th C. attitudes, contexts and traditions surrounding the growth of the Victorian Celebration and Mourning of the dead. For a dissertation about 19th C. American funeral practice and attitudes towards death, see Gary Laderman's The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Towards Death, 1799-1883. [New Haven: Yale University Press. 1996]

For those interested in current European funeral practice, in my first blog entry I pointed out Thanatorama. This French site (with English subtitles) features an inter-active audio-visual presentation to guide you through the immediate "afterlife" where you are the recently deceased. It is a fascinating journey through the cultural constructs of the funeral: embalming or cremation, and rites of burial as practiced in France today. Extremely well done. BUT be forewarned. There are a few images of actual corpses here...nothing gross or disrespectful, but a very informative story and well worth the journey.

Grave Portraits

2010-03-06T13:28:00.006-03:30

Among my favorite discoveries when exploring cemeteries are the little faces we find adhered to gravestones. These usually oval cameo portraits may be common in one cemetery, but are usually rare in most. The older versions are much more common in parts of Europe, or cemeteries associated with a particular cultural or ethnic group. The technology is such that they are among the most permanent form of photographic imaging processes known. Some are fired ceramic. Others fired enamel. When looking on-line recently, it seems that there has been a resurgence of this service in North America even with references to digitally printed photo-tiles. These are still fired onto porcelain as before, for permanence. See this site for an example of current applications.

These photographs are from an old cemetery on the East-bound road to Dugald, Manitoba, in an area with Eastern European ancestry. I photographed them one sunny March day in 1980 where I discovered this tradition for the first time.

It is interesting to compare the above with this unique plaque found in a small Newfoundland cemetery near McIvors. It is odd in that is not of the living person, but of his corpse. There are no other photo-plaques in this cemetery (yet).

A permanent likeness of the deceased on their last resting place has been a long-standing tradition, as illustrated this Mummy portrait of a young woman, 2nd century, Louvre, Paris. (...and let's not forget Tutankhamen.)

This tradition was also seen in the 17th Century as well. See Wikipedia's entry which includes this coffin portrait (right) of Barbara Domicela Lubomirska née Szczawinska, 1676. Oil on tin plate. Current location is the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland. It became a tradition to decorate coffins of deceased nobles (szlachta) with such funerary art in the times of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries, the time of the baroque in Poland and Sarmatism. This tradition was virtually unknown outside the Commonwealth.

In Italy we found along with 20th C photo-plaques beautiful 19th C bas relief portrait sculptures. Most are very accomplished, as one would expect in this land of great marble sculpture. Some of these images are from Cortona in Tuscany, others from de Cementerio de San Michele in Isola near Venice.

Epitaphiana

2010-03-03T16:19:00.002-03:30

Sorry for the long delay... I'm back now, so here is a little tidbit to keep you interested.

There are many websites which list the witty and often apocryphal epitaphs found on tombstones. For example, a Wild West headstone in the Boothill Graveyard in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona, USA, bears the classic epitaph:

Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no Les, no more.

One of many web-pages with a list of these witty couplets is at this link. But for a more historical and complete catalogue, see this book from the 19th Century which archives many epitaphs from ye olde English graveyards (pre 1870's). It is reproduced in full at the Internet Archive Open Library, and is entitled:

Epitaphiana or, The curiosities of churchyard literature, being a miscellaneous collection of epitaphs with an introduction giving an account of various customs prevailing amongst the ancients and moderns in the disposal of their dead.

by William Fairley

Published in 1875, S. Tinsley (London)

Here is an embedded reader courtesy of Internet Archive Open Library which presents the book in its entirety, enjoy:

F. Gonzalez-Crussi

2010-02-07T15:06:00.003-03:30

Two books I acquired turned out to be among the best I've read on the subject of death. First, they do not sensationalize. Second, they are nearly poetic in their examination of the processes of life to death. Written by Dr. F. Gonzalez-Crussi, who in the 1990's was head of laboratories and professor of pathology at the Children's Memorial Hospital of Northwestern University in Chicago. He ponders death from his unusual perspective of, as he puts it, "a corpse handler" in his earlier book, Notes of an Anatomist, and continues where he left off in the essays within these books. His thoughts and writings emanate from his experience surrounding death and his "communion with the dead". Suspended Animation, six essays on the preservation of bodily parts, is also illustrated with the amazing photographs of Rosamond W. Purcell. (Harcourt—Brace & Co. 1995)

His essays and her photographs within this book are poetical in nature, personal, and full of the awe and reverence of a writer and a photographer who truly respect both the physical processes and the nature of our brief time here on earth. The essays examine the various ways in which we try to preserve remnants of our physical existence. Chapter titles are:

Microcosm in a Bottle
Of Flaying, Dismemberment, and other Inconveniences
Bologna, The Learned
Waxing Philosophical ... and a bit Hypersensitive
How We Come to Be
Nature's Lapses

... plus a Photographer's Note from Purcell. The photographs are rich still life details made in medical and anatomy collections in Spain, Italy and the USA.

An earlier book from Dr. Gonzalez-Crussi centers around a return to his homeland to revisit Mexico's Day of the Dead, the long tradition of the cemetery vigils of November 2. In this little book, also from Harcourt—Brace & Co. 1993, The Day of the Dead and Other Mortal Reflections, we find these chapters:

A Visit to the Embalmer,
The Grin of the Calavera,
Of Skulls in a Heap and Soft Parts in Glass Jars,
Two Unrecorded Scenes,
Moonlight Autopsy,
Lights, Camera, Stillness! Death and the Visual Arts.

It explores many facets and perceptions, times and locations, all written in a wonderfully immediate and personal tone.

Continuing with the theme of today's entry, I include here an image of a stereo card in my collection. It is from "The Edinburgh Atlas of Anatomy" and is of the dissected human thorax. The over-sized yellow card has the explanatory text on the back and was doubtlessly used by medical students and anatomists in the late 19th or early 20th Century. One can see this image in full 3-D with a traditional stereo viewer.

Carved Skulls

2010-02-05T20:49:00.001-03:30

When I was browsing for images of skulls, I came across these examples of intricately carved human skulls. They are apparently quite old and from Asia, and with a Buddhist connection, although I can't be sure. All I can say is that they are incredible in their detail and beauty. The patina of age and the imagery on each one is amazing. I wish I knew more about the graphic symbolism and their actual provenance. Maybe one of my readers can enlighten us.

Skull One:

Or Skull Two:

And the best – Skull Three:

One can assume that these are now hidden away in a personal collection somewhere. I wonder what the ethical ramifications are for possessing something like this. Where were they taken from in the first place? And of course, the eternal question: Who were they?

The need to memorialize or even sanctify physical remains is certainly not new, as illustrated above. But what about today? We can't legally retain and decorate the bones of our relatives, so what can we do? Maybe we can have something as beautiful as these skulls by creating a reliquary for their ashes. There are many serious artists who are crafting beautiful urns and boxes to hold cremains. I assume they are not intended for burial. At Funeria one can find the most exquisite reliquaries. Their website opens with this on their portfolio page:

Sleeping Beauties

2010-02-01T20:29:00.000-03:30

One of the seeds of my interest in postmortem portraiture was planted when I saw the book Sleeping Beauties: Memorial Photography in America. This beautiful hard-cover collection was edited from the Dr. Stanley Burns Archive and published in 1990 by TwelveTrees Press. The first edition is now quite valuable. It was followed in 2002 with Sleeping Beauties II: Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography. American and European Traditions published by the Burns Archive Press. Both fairly large books have gilt text on the plain black cover. The photograph collections within are among the best examples of postmortem portraiture you will find anywhere.

An excerpt from the Burns Archive Website describes Dr. Burns and his collection's origin below:

In 1975, Dr. Stanley B. Burns, an eye surgeon and vision specialist practicing in New York City, became interested in daguerreotypes and other early photographs. By 1978, Dr. Burns had acquired, through aggressive buying and connoisseurship, one of America's most important collections of early photography.

In 1988, the Burns Archive moved into its permanent headquarters, a New York townhouse built in 1890, at 140 East 38th Street.

My own collection was in response to these. It is important to consider that all of these images are virtually one-of-a-kind. Literally so for the daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes. Most likely so for cartes-des-visite and cabinet cards because of the small chance of duplicates surviving so long. Even other prints were likely in the personal collections of the immediate family, so only rarely do I come across more than one copy. So, like the Sleeping Beauties books, here are more examples from:

The Post-Mortem Portrait Archive:
From my postmortem collection, these examples are among my favorites. The first is a 1860-65 tintype in a daguerreotype case in which the face was slightly hand-tinted. An amazing photo, equally as good as any in the Burns Archive.

An interesting trend for some early 20th Century examples, is the vertical format baby wearing a white Christening gown. There seems to be an attempt to make the child look angelic and serene. These three similar Edwardian examples are printed 12-13 cm by 9-10 cm and mounted onto embossed card stock.

This one had written on the back: "Lester L. Shire, 3 mos. 5 dys".

These two little cartes-des-visite from the 1870's(?) are also amazing in their sensitivity and elegance.

The little girl in the chair seems to be watching the camera, but the tell-tale signs of death make it clear that she is not seeing anything. One of the saddest revelations from looking at these images is the reality of the death of these children. One sometimes forgets this when we are distracted by the beauty of the work.

The Embalming Room

2010-01-24T18:39:00.004-03:30

Photographs of what goes on behind the closed doors of funeral homes and autopsy labs are rare and rightly so. But the empty spaces can be revealing, however. It is always interesting to compare past circumstances to contemporary ones. These windowless suites are usually hidden away in an unobtrusive part of the undertaker's complex, away from the prying eyes of the morbidly curious public. Only dedicated specialists work here. I came across two photographs from days of yore which illustrate the changes in these facilities in the first half of the 20th Century. The first is from 1910 (Mid-Western Canada) and looks like something from a bad Western movie. I can almost picture the sheriff and a country doctor examining the bullet riddled body of Big Bad Bart in this room.

Decades later, possibly in the 1950's or 60's (?) the embalming suite in this photograph has taken on a much more clinical and organized layout. Surfaces are smooth and white. A sense of sterility pervades. The equipment looks like it was designed for the task at hand, not something borrowed from a kitchen or bedroom as in the older photograph.

I have managed to find a couple of books that may have actually been on the shelves of the older room (top photo). One is this reprint I found on eBay of an 1897-1900 embalmer's manual. It is complete with bad half-tone images of various aspects of the process. The cover design is a modern conceit of the bookseller. It starts with a brief historical section describing ancient forms of preservation, mummification and embalming as practiced throughout the world. The "American" process itself hadn't been in practice for much more than 40 years when this was originally printed. After a major section of the actual process, it covers all the eventualities of "difficult" cadavers, either through illness or misfortune. It ends with a small section on "Funeral Etiquette" and the duties of undertakers in the 1890's.

I also managed to find an original copy of an embalming text, printed in 1909. Here the dark, textured, leather-like cover is embossed tactfully on the front with the title, Eckels–Genung Method and Eckels' Practical Embalmer on the spine. It has very few illustrations, as most plate references point to a missing second volume. It is quite detailed in the anatomical processes that embalmers must study, even at that early time. I will certainly think twice about allowing this for me when the time comes..... Embalming as standard practice is a recent, mainly American tradition that is slowly spreading around the world. In this day of shrinking land-mass for populations and agriculture, ground pollution, and our modern cultural lack of real involvement with the processes of dying, it makes no sense. But more on that later.

A related tidbit to explore is the Oscar winning Japanese film: Departures (or Okuribito). (2008, 2009 USA).

Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled "Departures" thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a "Nokanshi" or "encoffineer," a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of "Nokanshi," acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living. — Synopsis written by Regent Releasing for IMDb

There's also a good review at Living in Cinema. Where I live, these odd films simply do not appear, so I am waiting for a chance to acquire it elsewhere.

————•••————

At this point, maybe what we need is a compendium, a treasure trove of information directly related to our topic at hand. Well I did find a pretty good one for today's Death Link. It is the Encyclopaedia of Death and Dying. It is a very thorough reference for articles and definitions, well footnoted and written in a scholarly manner. Well worth the look.

Casket Catalogue - ca 1911

2010-01-11T20:45:00.001-03:30

I found this amazing collection on good-old-eBay a few years ago. It is a casket catalog from the National Casket Company with a title page dated 1911.

The booklet contains a couple hundred halftone photos with the particulars on each page of the various caskets and vaults made available to the mourning public by the National Casket Company.

The biggest and best part of the collection was the hundreds of dog-eared linen-backed vintage silver-prints that accompanied the catalog itself. They seemed to be the sources for the halftone images within the catalog. Considering the overall condition, it is amazing that the two were found together. They also contain typewritten information on the back of each print, many with prices and penciled corrections.

There was only one photograph that was labeled as a child's casket. In the image below, the typewritten text from the back was copied and layered with the image to make a composite. I may use it as a piece in my art practice, but have not come to terms with its inherent power and its relationship to the postmortem photographs in my collection. I'm thinking of making a large ink-jet print with a polymer-plate embossment of the text in letterpress over the surface of the image. This is a digital representation of how it might look.

The wonderful thing about a find like this is that it is likely unique. Like with the postmortem portraits, I inherit a lot of responsibility for how these images are used, how they are archived, and how they are disseminated. This blog is a start. I am curious as to what many of you might think.

The Post-Mortem Portrait Archive:

From my postmortem collection, I sorted through the dozen or so that included small white caskets and came up with one that is the closest to the one in the above catalog photo.

They both date to the same early 20th century period. The postmortem is in an embossed mat folder with an 11.1 cm x 16.2 cm image. The Edwardian room is likely in the USA.

Putting the FUN in FUNeral

2010-01-10T17:08:00.004-03:30

The Dismal Trade is one based on a long tradition and a somber Gothic aesthetic, even today. White hearses and caskets took a long time to appear but eventually did, first with children's caskets. However, there are exceptions to the conservatism of Western culture. Best case in point are the amazing and elaborate fantasy caskets made only in Ghana, West Africa. It's like a Mardi-Gras parade. The hand-made sculptures are unique to this small area. I am sure they may catch on in other places, though. Internet exposure does that to many things.

There are more examples at the National Museum of Funeral History.

(Another interesting site to bookmark.)

And go to these sites to see even more: Ghanaweb and Ghana-net.

But what is it with some people? There are some sites on-line that seem to stretch the boundaries of taste and credibility. At the other end of the spectrum are the questionable casket calendars from Cofanifunebri, a casket maker in Italy. The calendars have evolved from pure titillation to Gothic center-folds. Still, it seems like a very weird selling strategy to me.

[click images for larger versions]

The Post-Mortem Portrait Archive:

Today's photo from my postmortem collection is an odd little snapshot from Peru. Here the baby's coffin is surrounded by fresh local flowers and candles set in classic Coca-Cola bottle vases. That and the simplicity of the hand-made coffin may attest to the poverty of the family but equally well to the care and attention paid to honouring their lost baby.

We see what could be a small toy and a clay ocarina by her head and a little bottle at her feet. She has a plaited band across her forehead and is dressed in her best satin Christening gown. It looks like she is clasping white flowers in her hands. There is a saucer of something on the right side at the foot of the coffin. Maize?

Collecting: Art vs. Memorializing

2010-01-07T08:48:00.002-03:30

Another aspect of this blog is to examine the act of memorializing the dead. Is it to dampen our fear by surrounding ourselves with reminders of our own mortality? It's inevitable, so get over it. The memento mori will be a future topic, but it may tangentially relate to the following collections.

The broad topic of accumulating a collection of artifacts can span interests as far reaching as art-making to archaeology; from hobbies to archives; from obsessions to instinct. The collections of artist Barton Lidice Beneš fit all of these categories. His 2003 book, Curiosa: Celebrity Relics, Historical Fossils, & Other Metamorphic Rubbish (Abrams) is a fascinating journey through his life-long obsession (art?) (archive?). Exploring it make it our obsession as well. Here we find a huge collection of artifacts and specimens, each displayed in its own little wooden cubicle with a hand-written notation on a paper card. Most seem to have more power by their association with someone or something we often recognize, or with the items in the surrounding cubicles. Each item provides a physical "touch-stone" to a world of people and places we may never actually experience. One has to accept the provenance, but the book's essay seems to indicate that it is trustworthy.

One particular piece is entitled Death Museum and consists of 56 little compartments, each containing an item that relates to mortality or the dismal trade. Individually, many mean nothing, but the collection has power and poignancy.

A detail (below) of items related to our topic. The book does reveal something of his collecting process, but not enough to fully appreciate how amazingly difficult it must be to make collections like these. I am amazed that Beneš has a circle of friends and acquaintances that are so "prolific" and connected to so many other well known people and events. The sheer mass of items-of-note almost begs credibility. But then his international reputation as an artist provides many more opportunities than we mere mortals could hope for.

Another page (below) shows a thematic collection related to artists and the personal items that were once physically connected to them. Is this a form of memorializing? Or does that happen only after the artist is deceased?

I get a little shiver when I look over these pages. I feel like I have been given something intimate, private, special. Even the most mundane item becomes important in this context. How is it that a lost button, a burnt match or a nail clipping can become so charged when we relate it to a person or event? There is a psychological link between this collection and the relic in a monstrance. I can empathize with the pilgrim who sees the fragment of a saint's bone. It must be a powerful experience for a believer.

I think this book could be a good jumping-off point for me to produce some new work with the ever-growing collection of detritus that fills my studio. I will post the results if they materialize.

Wisconsin Death Trip

2010-01-04T18:05:00.006-03:30

A great book from 1973 was Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip (Pantheon/Random House)(reissued in 1990 and 2000). It fits really well here because it examines both the photographic and written record to illustrate the life of the average person in this part of the world between 1890 and 1910. There is much evidence of tragedy in the reprinted newspaper excerpts and in the eyes of those pictured. It was a dark time, when murder, accidental death and disease were common occurrences. People faced it daily and in tragic ways.

The portraits in this book (originally his PhD thesis) are many and wonderful. Lesy has played around with some of the imagery, albeit in a 1970's kinda way..... The text is a great read, too.

The portraits in this book are very much like the photographs that I collect: nineteenth century views of long-gone people. I find that it is especially poignant to look into the eyes of someone who lived more than a century ago; to see their expression, clothes, and posture as if standing before them in life. Roland Barthes discusses the impact of the snapshot in this way in his great book: Camera Lucida.

The Post-Mortem Portrait Archive:
I also collect post-mortem portraits, a specialized yet somewhat common form of portraiture from the late 19th C and early 20th C. We can get philosophical here and say that all photographic portraits are post mortem....eventually. But what is even more interesting, is that the post-mortem portraits of babies and children seem to far out-number those of adults. One could say that this was because at that time, when photography was in its infancy and in the hands of a few professionals, there may not have been a chance for a child or young person to have had a studio portrait made. Their time of death would be the last opportunity to capture a likeness, so many photographers offered their services, either in their studio, the funeral home, or even at the home of the deceased or at the grave-side. On the back of early cartes-des-visite and cabinet cards, we sometimes see advertisements that offer these specific services. The 20th century saw the growth of the Kodak and a notion that these portraits were no longer appropriate for open and public display. The Cabinet card post-mortem portraits were no longer being displayed on the wall or piano top. They became more private. As we progressed through the 20th C, and even into the 21st, we find that these photographs are still being made by immediate families, especially with the invention of the Polaroid, and now with the ease of a digital camera.

In this blog, I will regularly feature portrait samples from my collection. There are many websites that maintain an archive of these as well, and I will also post links. For example, go to the Thanatos Archives to see their wonderful collection of 19th C material. Today, we will start with this fine portrait, an excellent example of early 20th century studio work.

It was shot after the slow disappearance of traditional symbolism where the casket or coffin, bassinet or carriage, flowers, and lace were the usual language of these images. It is fairly large, (5" x 7") and mounted on an even larger gray card, so it was meant for display, even in the pre-WWI period from which it may have come. Its stark and clinical approach is a bit of an anomaly, but there is a professionalism and clarity of purpose that I find quite intriguing. This is a simple visual statement: "This child is dead. But she once looked like this." I cannot look at this image without thinking that I am looking at a corpse, so I can't imagine a family member using this image as a fond visual remembrance of their baby. How did they do it? Yet, with the distancing of time and anonymity, I can find it beautiful.

The Body and its Dissolusion

2010-01-03T11:37:00.001-03:30

When we think about death it is impossible to not consider the effect the end will have on the human body. How are we any different from the other organic materials we find around us? Entertainment media is quick to exaggerate the grotesqueness of decay, the scary corpses, and animated skeletons, the afterlife. But what is it really like for human remains? If you wade through the trash written for shock value out there, you can still find some very clear, informative and even entertaining books on the subject.

Let's start our journey with a pop-culture book by Mary Roach entitled STIFF (W.W. Norton and Co., 2003). In this little book, she addresses "The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers". Strangely enough, it is written in a witty and somewhat irreverent style but maintains an accurate and informative structure throughout. It is really mainly about the body, as most of the chapters explore how cadavers are used for research, from medical and dental schools to manufacturers of safety gear and military/forensic testing. Some chapters address historical cases of body snatching for anatomists, the physiological and philosophical difficulties of how to determine the moment of death, and even the author's own decision about being a body donor. This book is an excellent introduction to the cadaver as a resource and how this amazing organism continues to inform us after its death. For those not comfortable with the more graphic and disturbing literature that is out there or even the general idea of death, this book would be a good practical start.

For a more complete picture of "What Happens to Dead Bodies?", find Kenneth V. Iverson's sizable tome Death to Dust instead. (Galen Press, 1994) It seems to have been the source for most of Roach's information, but here it is fleshed out, scholarly, and comprehensive ... and heavily footnoted. Chapters are:

Dying to Know: Introduction
I'm Dead—Now What?
Help for the Living: Organ, Tissue, and Whole Body Donation
My Body and the Pathologist: The Autopsy
Beauty in Death
The Eternal Flame
Souls on Ice
Wayward Bodies
Nightmares
Going Out in Style
Black Tie Affairs
From Earth to Earth
A Hand from the Grave
Say it Gently: Words, Sayings and Poetry about the Dead
plus a Glossary and ten Appendices

A good Australian website with similar information is at Death: The Last Tabboo. Again, nothing gross or sensational here, just good information from the Australian Museum. You can also find links and reference pages.

In future blogs I plan to explore how we picture death, how we collect artifacts and memorialize the dead. If you can suggest topics or resources that would be appropriate here, please feel free to submit them.

Starting something New about something Old

2010-01-01T15:58:00.007-03:30

This first day of a New Year brings my attempt to start a blog about endings ... death.

"Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die".

Anonymous

In this blog you will find articles about various items in my thanatos/taphophillic collection: books, post mortem portraits, artifacts, and oddities I find elsewhere that are worthy of your attention. I will highlight items from my own collection(s) with the idea that the very examination of symbols of our mortality is enough to prepare us for the end. Why do we collect? What of ourselves do we leave for others to collect and therefore remember?

We begin with a book that says it all.

The Philippe Ariès book, The Hour of Our Death is one of the definitive texts on the subject, written in 1977. (This cover is of the 1981 Oxford University Press edition) Here Ariès traces the human understanding of death within culture from the earliest Christian times to the modern day. All aspects of how we treat the dead, the trappings and symbols of death, the afterlife, and our tangle of beliefs in the mysteries of the process of ceasing to be are researched and discussed here with a wealth of authority and skill.

For anyone wishing to pursue thorough research of the concept of physical death and its place in our culture, this is the book from which to start the journey. Others will be suggested in later blog entries. Please stay tuned.

Another aspect of this blog is to periodically send you on a journey to a website that opens more doors to the subject of death and remembrance, the odd and macabre, collecting and archiving, and how we might leave a trace of ourselves in the world we will someday leave behind.

Step One: Have a safe and Happy New Year.

and Step Two: For an introduction, be sure to visit: Thanatorama.

In this French site (with English subtitles) an inter-active audio-visual presentation will guide you through the immediate "afterlife" where you are the recently deceased. It is a fascinating journey through the cultural constructs of the funeral: embalming or cremation, and rites of burial as practiced in France today. Extremely well done. BUT be forewarned. There are images of actual corpses here...nothing gross or disrespectful, but very informative and worth the journey.