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.