Last walk of the deceased

I wanted to place myself within the position of the deceased taking their last metaphorical 'walk' in the living world before being laid to rest upon the altar.


This is a crucial moment for the family and relatives of the deceased as they have seen them grow through their life until they find that it is their time to go and leave this world. Leaving only memories and the love of the person to be their living presence.
Below I have included both the flash film and some stills to show the process;

Here are some stills:

Looking back through my blog I found that on many occassions I have focused on the composition and lighting in which was new for me to experiment with. However now that I know how to manipulate the lighting within a photograph I have thought about the ways in which I could interpret this into my video in order to develop it further and gauge a better understanding of what I wanted. 

Christian Payne: Remembering Joshua David Mulvany

Christian Payne 

 This is a series by Christian Payne in which he was commissioned by a close friend of his to photograph the funeral of a deceased relative.
He chose to complete this series as he thought that a funeral was an odd place to be commissioned to take photographs and it would be a new face to show to that of the photography world. Why not document a funeral, it is much like that of a christening and a wedding, where the family join up to think of loved ones and pay respects?
"Photographs of a funeral can act as part of a fitting memorial, bringing together happy and sad memories of the deceased."

After researching into the different aspects of death, I decided that I didn't want to document a funeral as the photographer completed above as I believe that the funeral would become more about a photography project rather than that of actually respecting the deceased and giving them privacy within their final goodbye, as well as exposing the grieving relatives while in pain. It would almost feel as though their loss is my gain which I didn't want it to become.
As I am a Christian I feel that this would go against what I believe in if I were to complete this task, so now knowing what it would be like to document a funeral from exposure and insight from the photographs above, I decided to take a different route in documenting the passage of death, using inspiration and influence from funerals and the photographer above, by creating a flash video from stills of the final walk of the deceased.

The last walk of the coffin

Taking influence from my earlier sandwich prints, I decided to go and take some photographs of flowers, graves and the church itself so that I could create sandwich prints outside of the darkroom. Almost creating a reverse sandwich print, much like that of a film to a photograph.

To create these sandwich prints I just overlapped two photographs of which are of different subject matter and then lowering the opacity tool, in photoshop, to create an almost transparent top layer of the photograph.

I wanted to show the feeling of flowers taking over the final moments of our lives with them being present at funeral, churches exteriors and interiors as well as the grave of the deceased itself. I decided to place the flower photograph on top of the under photo to create this almost suffocating feeling around the theme and presence of death.

Here are some other photographs, below, taken while completing this experiment;

Symbolism of the death of a flower

The death of a flower symbolises many different aspects of life being lost or wearing away. If flowers are shown within the home then people tend to throw them away before they can see them begin to turn brown or die as they don't like the feeling of the concept or reality of death. A flower represents life through the starting of the shoot to the bud and then to the flower, ending with the brown and crisp petals on the floor.

People don't want to believe that they are going to die.

Vanitas paintings are a type of symbolic art that tend to centre around the themes of life and it's fragility in which they were very common in medieval funerary art.

 By the 15th century these could be extremely morbid and explicit, reflecting an increased obsession with death, decay and the overlapping motif of the skull. Paintings in the vanitas style are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. They also provided a moral justification for many paintings of attractive objects.

Death of a flower

With the use of flowers in my last experiment I thought about instead of focusing on the death of a human and their decay through life, I would look more at death of the flower itself within this post.

There is a sense of beauty within the life of a flower from bud, to bloom through to the fallen crisp brown shell present at the base of the vase. In some ways you could associate his with the life cycle of a human from baby, to teen, adult through to elderly until death brings us back to the start.

Here I have created a sequence of photographs in which you can see the decaying of a flower in order to show this theory.

Here are some more photos of which show the flower within the process above;

Tonal ranges

I felt it neccesary that I should do an observation of different types of skulls through photographs as I am missing a more tonal range of photographs within my different posts in which just focus on the form of the subject matter within them.

I am very pleased with these photographs as they are much more subtle and muted in their message and expressions in which show that beauty within them compared to that of my other photos which are much more vibrant and directed in their approach. Here are my photos;

Funeral or human florist?

From being mostly inspired from that of the Day of the Dead festival, I then began thinking about the different ways that I could interpret the influences through my next experiment and through the photographs taken.

The Day of the Dead festival represents so much within cultural beliefs through the use of dressing up and flowers being placed all around the towns of Mexico.

 I knew that by using a bath, water and that of a naked body I could get the viewers to suspect drowning. I wanted to have the naked figure as this, along with the bath, create a similar tonal range within the photograph that would contrast nicely with the brightness of the flowers within the later photographs.

Out of this series of photographs I wanted to gauge that sense of flowers taking over and encasing the presence of death with the covering of the human face throughout the series.
This is the final image taken from this set:

Below shows how I have then went onto develop the photographs above.

From the thoughts of drowning I then thought about what the next stage in the death ceremony would, the placing of the body within the coffin.

From this I could then gauge an idea as to how I could then develop these ideas. I thought about how the deceased would be laid within the coffin and how I could represent the encased body. The deceased almost become detached from their personality in sense that they are not what their relatives once knew them as. 

  

The placing of the flowers around the head really emphasises that detached sense between spirit and body.

Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and around the world in many cultures. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico, where it attains the quality of a National Holiday, and all banks are closed. The celebration takes place on November 1–2, in connection with the Catholic holidays of All Saints' Day (on Nov 1st) and All Souls' Day (on Nov 2nd).

This festival allows people to go to cemeteries to be with the souls of the departed and build private altars containing the favorite foods and beverages as well as photos and memorabilia of the departed. Flowers such as orange Marigold, Lillies and Tulips are placed on and around the graves. The intent is to encourage visits by the souls, so that the souls will hear the prayers and the comments of the living directed to them. Celebrations can take a humorous tone, as celebrants remember funny events and anecdotes about the departed.

Celebrating and reflecting on death

Different cultures celebrate and mourn in almost as many unique ways as there are unique cultures.
Ancient Egyptians believed that many parts of life were carried over into death, and many Pharaohs were buried with their possessions, sometimes even with servants, and other tools they might need in the afterlife. 
Some ancient cultures burned their dead on funeral pyres, such as Ancient Greeks believed that there was a journey in the afterlife one must undertake, including being ferried across the river Styx by an eternal boatman.

The ancient Vikings thought that  life mirrored what would happen to them in  the afterlife. They believed that to die in battle gave the person gratitude and guarenteed and eternity of hapiness.
Christians believe the dead will be seen again one day in the future and often celebrate the passing on of a life through wakes, as part of dealing with their grief.
Many funerals are associated with flowers, almost as though the flowers are taking over the whole part of the ceremony/ passing of life. Flowers are very much used within funerals as many people beleve they can show life and the passing of life as the flower slowly goes brown and crisps around the egdes of the petals.

Funerals

To find out what funerals mean to different people I sent a small note to each of my family members in order for a range of responses. I was able to gauge a good understanding from this experiment as to what a group of people within a certain community, my family, believe a funeral is/ it's meaning or what can be expected from one.

This was my initial letter to my relatives:-

Hello .........

                   I have been completing a photography project on the topic of Death and so far I have completed many experiments to lead me deeper into this theme, however to proceed forward I would like to know and gauge your perceptions of a funeral and what one means to you, maybe you have even attended one in the past.

I would love to hear your opinions, please could you get back to me as soon as possible,

Many thanks

Ashleigh

I recieved many different replys to this letter, only a few are shown below:-

Dear stranger

In Shizuka Yokomizo’s series of portraits called 'Dear Strangers', each photograph shows someone looking out of a window. The artist had never met any of these people before. She selected their addresses and then wrote an anonymous letter asking if the recipient would stand at a particular window, alone, with the room lights on, at a specific time of night so that she could photograph them from the street. The artist simply promised to be there waiting. If they did not wish to participate they could close the curtains.












I thought that this was a very unique project to create and was very much inspired my Yokomizo within both the letters I sent to people asking about their deceased relatives, http://ashleighsalevelexam.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/posting-to-strangers.html ,
as well as the letters I am about to send to my family relatives, asking what a funeral means to them.

Sandwich Printing

Sandwich printing is a photographic technique, that takes place in the dark room, that is created by combining two negatives into the film carrier of the enlarger and printing onto one sheet of photographic paper to create one image.
These were more experimental attempts at the sandwich printing technique, however they have turned out quite well and show both images within the final print. I now want to experiment more within the theme that I have chosen; Death. Along with the use of figures.

Image 1:

I didn't like the composition of the image above and so I used the enlarger to expand the photograph and changed the position of the paper so that the figure's head was situated more into the centre of the photograph to make a much more appealing and equal composition. The image, below, is my redone image.

Image 2:

I found that the photograph above was much too light for what I wanted and so I doubled the exposure time to make a more intense and deeper toned image to that of the former. Below is the second image produced.

Due to the fact that I used negative films, one of the images has appeared in the shadows of the other image. This occurs as a result of the shadow areas being less dense that the highlighted areas of the negatives used. The more contrast and underexposed the shadows are, the clearer the 1st negative will shine through the second.
I wanted the sandwich prints to almost seem surreal in the question of; is that a real person or spirit? However I feel that I have been able to capture this within my second images rather than that of my first attempts as the figure appears lighter and so fades more into the image itself creating that more meaningful and insightful response.