Still Death
I appreciate that some of the content and views in this project may be uncomfortable. The views are very much my perspective and you may well have different insights and opinions. And that’s okay. We don’t talk about death enough. It’s such a significant and (in its truest sense) life-changing event, that we should
Mankind is unique amongst all living things in that it knows that at some point, we all die
You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose … That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes, it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?”
— The Farthest Shore, 1972 (Earthsea Cycle #3). Ursula K Le Guin
This knowledge is both a blessing and a curse
For the most part, we ignore this fact and somehow fool ourselves that we are near-immortal. Or that the fateful day is so far distant that we do not need to worry about it. Well, not today anyway. Always tomorrow
But we ignore the blessing. Our lives will end. Our time is finite. So what do we do with that time? What is a life ‘well-lived’?
I doubt that, when our final moments come, any of us are going to declare from our death-beds that they wish they had given the shed another coat of paint (even though it could do with it). Although maybe that is the painful reality of life; You could live every day at the edge as if it is your last, and maybe, self-fulfilling, very quickly it will become so. Or you could prudently prepare for the very long haul, eking out meagre resources. You won’t live forever, so somewhere in between is a balance. Either consciously or unconsciously, we are all somewhere on the spectrum between two extremes
So what has all of this to do with photography? In some respects, nothing. It is a bigger question than photography. But equally, isn’t that the aspiration of Art? To ask difficult questions and to present a perspective? If I have X days left, how should I spend them? Hugging my family? Commuting to work? Painting the shed? Out with my camera? Printing my images?
I’m intrigued and inspired by Guy Tal’s thoughts on living an artistic life. At present, that is not an option for me as I have chosen to prioritise other goals in life; helping the fledglings leave the nest with the best start I can give them. Maybe it is the primal imperative of deep-down unacknowledged-knowledge that it will end for me, but I can perpetuate my gene pool as a second-best option to actual immortality
“The only thing that will be left of you is the role that you’ve played in other people’s stories, what you leave with other people, and that reverberates through time, and that is a beautiful thing”
Brian S Lowery (TED talk 2024)
Our children hopefully have happy and strong memories of us. I hope that my grandchildren will know me, but their memories will be fewer and fainter. Would that I live long enough and healthy enough to meet my great-grandchildren, who may be left with vague memories, prompted by old family photos and anecdotes that drift away
When we are gone, the memories of us will fade with each passing year, like a photocopy, of a copy, of a copy. Each less distinct that the last, less detailed, just an outline of what was. Evidence that you were there, but ever less substance ….
In a sweet symmetry, headstones are subject to the ravages of time and their messages becomes harder to discern. Over time, they become fully weathered and whilst it is obvious that there has been a message, it is lost in the mists of time, until finally the stone is returned to a blank slate. No collective memory. No message for the living
As a side topic, for me at least, I see gravestones and memorials as being solely for the benefit of the living. An outward display of how we want our brethren to perceive us once we are gone and no-one can vouchsafe the reality of what we were really like. Today, many of us give a slight smug sneer to the Instagrammers who are showing how ‘shamazing” their life is at every available opportunity. We know that this is a curated veneer of real lives, but are the eulogies on gravestones any different? I suspect the instances of “he was a grumpy old sod” on headstones are few and far between (and, statistically at least, at odds with the reality) but hopefully a few honest relatives have ignored the Insta-filters of their day and given their true view
Similarly, I believe that funerals are solely for the living. A cathartic full stop. An opportunity to mark a change from one status to another, fairly obviously for the dead but also for the living
The next image is both a beautiful and brutal truth. The headstone has become weathered with age. Over time, weathering had freed the majority of the engraved lettering, leaving a simple but indisputable truth. Arguably the sum total for most of us
If the above seems a direct truth, the next gravestone was possibly more disheartening. Same construction, weathered letters fading to nothing. A simple damning message left behind … “Wife of …”. No more, no less, no context, no subtlety, no richness of being. Just “Wife of …”.
The Devil’s Own
So do we strive to give our life meaning? If not for ourself, then for others? Whilst none of us know when our time will come, imagine being sent to a battlefield knowing that you have a 1 in 5 chance of being killed: Between 1914 and 1918, around 12,000 infantry recruits were drilled in trench warfare at Kitchener’s Field ahead of being sent to the front. Whilst none of us have a real sense of our own mortality, how must it have felt to be training there, knowing that you and your comrades have a high likelihood of death or serious injury? Of the 12,000 trainees, 5,000 were injured and 2,200 died. The terms ‘bravery’ and ‘sacrifice’ do not do it justice. It’s one thing for me conceptually to try and acknowledge my own mortality, but that must have been an unbearable reality to face every moment of every day
The countryside still bears witness to the trenches, but nature and life is slowly reclaiming this most brutal preparation
View from training trench over no-man’s land
Perceptual ambiguity
On initial view, this image is about fading memory of the deceased. Their eulogies and plaudits are slowly being consumed by creeping ivy. Their names visible but barely anything else. And then maybe your mind flips. It’s about life; its not about fading for Mary, Charles and George. Its about the unstoppable reestablishment of life. Not necessarily human life, but the eco system having its own. In some small way, maybe Mary, Charles and George are now feed for the ivy; nutrients, sustenance and impetus. They live on, albeit in a different form. As far as we know, energy and matter cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only change form. So in that context, what is Death? Are my beliefs that far from the organised religionista in that maybe I should see death as simply a transition from one state of being to another?
I suspect a fundamental difference is maybe the sense of self; I believe that they believe, one retains one sense of self in all states, whereas for me, my matter and my energy change and become something else but as an acorn or a grub, I am not sure that I am still ‘me’. Perhaps that is what people mean by ‘soul’
I accept that for some, what I see as The End is for them a transition to another state. I suspect that this gives a very different lens to see life through and I can only talk from what is in my kitbag. As Dave Allen would say “may your god go with you”
Life:Death
Or are they not two things, opposites, but they are one thing. To live is to die to feed life which will die. It’s all one thing. A continuum
“in the midst of life, we are in death”
Or is life like a beach? A beach isn’t a thing in it’s own right but merely the amalgamation of countless grains of sand. So do all of these trees/plants/lichen/bugs/humans etc. in totality create the larger thing called Life?
Or is Life a thing in its own right, giving some animus to the trees and plants, until it is spent. But Life doesn’t care about Death because there are countless alternatives to replace that one grain of sand when its time comes. So again, is death just a facet of life in the way that seasons come and go but are never an end for Life in totality
Before I close, I feel that this project is becoming (to me) everything that I hoped it could be. The images speak to me and are a trigger for my subconscious, but only a trigger; I’m finding the writing of this text essential in my understanding of what my image making and subconscious is telling me, taking me a step closer to being able to talk about and acknowledge death and my own mortality.
