“Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has cast up in my time or is like to — this art by which even the poor can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones.”
Jane Carlyle
The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition
A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.
It’s out in May 2012!
Here’s a bit of fun. Over in New York there’s an exhibition in the Merchant’s House Museum of post mortem photographs from the Burns Archive. It’s an interesting exhibition space:
According to historic preservation rules the installation had to be creatively planned. No photos could be hung on the walls or placed directly on the furniture of this beautifully preserved 19th century home, nor could there be bright lights or flash photography. Memento Mori curator Eva Ulz did a great job of displaying a rich amount of information to compliment the historical and contemporary images. Early daguerreotypes and ambrotypes are exhibited in closets, waiting to be discovered. Three traditional wood displays encase memorial ephemera including postmortem photographs, coffin plates and cards. There is a sound and scent component to the exhibition as well- the rooms are perfumed and subtle recordings can be heard.
The best part, for my money, is the coffin in which you can have your own post-mortem photo taken. No Goth party should be without one.
Going through my stats, researching for a blog post, I saw that someone had clicked through a link I did not recognise. So I clicked through myself and found this wonderful account of embalming excellence at Harlem-based Owens Funeral Home “where beauty softens grief” . I used it in a blog post so long ago I’d forgotten. If you didn’t see it way back then, enjoy it now. If you recall it, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it again. The quality’s good enough to go full screen.
What a wonderful selling point this funeral home has: “I’m the guy who puts the smile on your face. Other places you just look dead.”
On a related theme, I’ve just stumbled on another article describing cosmetic treatments for the dead. While a certain amount of beautification goes on in UK funeral homes (it reflects well on an undertaker’s standards of care), we do not have over here the ritual (ordeal if you like) of the open casket visitation. So while, when thinking forward to our own funeral, we customarily conclude with the reflection that we won’t be there, Americans don’t. Because they will. And, of course, they want to look good and they’re bound to worry that they mightn’t. “People used to say, just throw me in a pine box and bury me in the back yard,” says Mark Duffey, president and CEO of Everest Funeral, a national funeral planning and concierge service. “But that’s all changing. Now people want to be remembered. A funeral is their last major event and they want to look good for it. I’ve even had people say, ‘I want you to get rid of my wrinkles and make me look younger’.”
“I’ve had people mention that they want their breasts to look perky when they’re dead,” says David Temrowski, funeral director of Temrowski & Sons Funeral Home in Warren, Mich. “Or they’ll say, ‘Can you get these wrinkles out?’ It’s all in humor, but I think people do think [more] about what they’re going to look like when they’re dead and lying in a casket.”
“My brother’s a plastic surgeon and I joke with him all the time that funeral directors were doing Botox long before any doctor thought of using it,” says John Vigliante, owner and manager of the Branch Funeral Home in Smithtown, N.Y. “Or at least we use a material that’s similar. We‘ll inject tissue fillers into the lips, the nose, the cheeks, above the eyebrows, the chin, and the hands. It’s the same concept as Botox and dermal filler.” … Lips are plumped, cheeks are filled and contoured, and hollowed hands are injected with filler to give them what Vigliante calls “a nice fuller appearance.”
Read the full article at newsvine.com here.
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In case you missed it, Daphne Todd’s portrait of her dead mother won the BP Portrait Award.
There is a good account of how it came to be painted and why in the Independent here.
