I have been busy working between celebrations and I have also be enjoying some down time too. My feet ache today as it's been a long day.
Today at work, I was looking at the elderly gentleman I was about to embalm and was thinking about blogging. This gentleman looked as though he was expecting something. Expectant. Thats an odd word to describe someones final face. Some people look very peaceful before I 'set their features' and some look like they are in pain. It is horrid for me to say out loud, but they do. I suppose that not every death is a peaceful 'letting go' and I suspect the mode of death dictates one's final face. In this man's last breath I wonder if he was looking for his mother, wife or child to come and get him? Or I wonder if he was greeted by his God, or if he was expecting something that never came?
This thought reminded me of a facebook/twitter/website I like called Thanatos Archive. It is a collection of photographs of deceased persons. To quote from their facebook group -
"Located in Seattle, Washington, The Thanatos Archive houses an extensive collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century postmortem, memorial, and mourning photography dating to the 1840s.
The online version of our archive, hosted at www.Thanatos.net since 2002, offers a searchable database of over 1300 scanned images (as of February 2011), with scans of new acquisitions being added on a regular basis."
I have on occasion taken a photograph of a client for a family member, and indeed have photos of my own grandfathers funeral and coffin (none of him in his coffin) which I have looked at from time to time. I have mixed feelings of the 'death face' pictures but can see how they are collectable nowadays.
The Wellcome Trust had in 2008, a wonderful collection of photographs ( linky) which were taken by Walter Schels who is a portrait photographer. Walter and his partner, journalist Beate Lakotta, visited people who were expected to die within a year or so, discussed their project and took their photo. Walter and Beate were telephoned when the person died and they returned to take a photo of their final face. Each pair of portraits was displayed in the collection with a brief synopsis of the persons life and death story. It was a very moving collection and certainly thought provoking. I was lucky to be amongst a small gathering of people at the gallery when Walter and Beate were doing a Q & A on their project. The deceaseds weren't embalmed before their picture was taken and very little was altered on their faces to ensure that the portrait photograph was indeed 'their final face'.
Really interesting and thought provoking too - am well versed with the Thanatos and Wellcome archives and was glad that you had been at the Walter and Beate Q & A session...it is often something I think of when standing quietly observing the stillness that is so apparent post death....who was this person? Where has the essence of life gone to? And then questions about how to best serve them practically...to achieve 'the final face' - sometimes so hard to find in amonxt all the traces of the final traumas of a recently departed lived life.
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