Upright Casket Created for Late Wanga King

"According to Wanga customs, kings are buried while seated, wrapped in animal skin with a stool, the symbol power, placed on their head.  Wambani’s burial will be done in the modern way but still uphold the tradition.The coffin that will be used to bury the king has been built like a chair to comply with the tradition."

for the full story, visit The Daily Nation

In Heaven, Underground

In Heaven, Underground, documents the lively continuing history of Berlin-Weissensee, the largest active Jewish Cemetery in Europe.  The engaging work of award winning director and producer, Britta Wauer, this film beautifully portrays the joys and sorrows of Weissensee through the lives of people intimately involved in the past, present and future of the cemetery.

Incredibly, the graves and monuments of Weissensee Cemetery in Eastern Berlin survived the Nazi Regime and WWII undefiled.  Superstitions left the cemetery a refuge during the early years of the Reich, and even after all of it's community was deported, the circumstances of war and priorities allowed the cemetery to remain untouched.     

Untended during the war, and shut off from the West after the partition of Berlin, the physical damage to Weisensee took the form of overgrowth and monument decay.  Already lush, the cemetery became a forest in the middle of a major metropolitan center. 

Today, cemetery staff and volunteers are gradually bringing the cemetery back to the glory that it once was.  We see the present day casket builders, groundskeepers and masons, rabbis and administrators at their work and in reflection.  We see Holocaust survivors, and descendants of the cemetery's dead returning to find graves that they thought were lost forever.  We hear of joyful times spent within the cemetery walls.  We see very personal loss, and gain an understanding of just how important a cemetery can be to survivors.      

The cemetery is a museum, an archaeological dig, and a village.  It is a place of old stories waiting to be rescued and new ones waiting to unfold. The stories that are shared here are always touched by a profound sadness and sense of loss, but shining through also are the individuals who make up the story of  Weissensee, their humanity, their contributions, and the spectacular beauty of this treasure of a cemetery.   

  

For more information about this documentary,visit 7th Art Releasing

Maeve Berry: Incandescence

I became acquainted with the thought provoking artwork of Maeve Berry several weeks ago through fellow blogger, Charles Cowling, and it has taken me that long to figure out how I feel about it. Ultimately, I decided to share her work with my readers because it brings up some questions that are vitally important to the subjects of Death, Art and Memorialization - and because of its surprising beauty.

Ms. Berry's 'Incandescence' is, in her words, "a series of images capturing the last moments of the human body in the material world." The photos are taken through the aperture of a cremator, and present something that very few people have seen in their lifetimes. Having seen the cremation process myself, I was pleased and surprised by the beauty and reverence of Ms. Berry's photos. A great deal of the cremation process is not something that is easy to watch. The reduction of the body by heat and flames involves some very disturbing imagery, but this is not Ms. Berry's focus.

What she has documented is the end of the process where the last amounts of combustible material in the body feed the flame and disappear, leaving only bone behind. Here is a statement about her work from the Diemar Noble gallery:

"Taken within a cremator, the images aim to confront the taboos surrounding death imagery in modern society. 'Incandescence' presents death as an art form, allowing the viewer a dual perception: an initial visual perception on a purely aesthetic level, followed by a secondary mental perception informed by the title and closer inspection of the images. The main concept driving this project was to afford death portraits, of natural deaths, a place in the art gallery amongst all other images of life events. She fills the void that exists in the modern art gallery with regard to the representation of death. Death is inevitable but frequently avoided by image-makers. The ‘final’ photograph is no longer prevalent in family albums. Her photographs, in addition to being evidence of the human condition, are aesthetically pleasing allowing the viewer to linger and reflect without feeling uneasy. Maeve Berry explores this visual void, demystifying and stripping back all material trappings - bones laid bare to reveal beauty in the thing that we fear the most."

The 'Incandescence' series represents an important step in acknowledging the reality of our mortal situation. In our culture, death is most often either ignored, or portrayed in a callous, graphically violent Hollywood manner. What has been missing is art like Ms. Berry's, that provides an accessible and aesthetically inviting imagery of death. In presenting the reality of dissolution without the disturbing gore that would turn us away, we are left to face the real issue that has not been adequately addressed by so many of us. Berry's art draws us in to a deeper and more personal exploration of the significant role that the inevitable demise and dissolution of our physical bodies plays in our lives. Accepting our mortality, and pondering our own demise on a deeper level can help us to make the most of our limited time, and deal with our deaths and the deaths of those we love in a more compassionate and positive manner.

As an undertaker, I have some reservations about the privacy issues involved in this kind of work, and I hope that Ms. Berry has obtained the informed consent of the families of the deceased involved in this project. Certainly though, the identities of the deceased are not apparent in the photos. In fact, at this point in the cremation process, what I see in these photos is more an example of our universal condition, than an image of the individual.

I also have reservations about the idea of 'death as an art form'. Documenting death and basing art on it can be an art form, but I feel that referring to death itself as an art form conveys the idea of art being the purpose and most notable result of death. This ignores the wider implications and consequences of death for the individual and that person's family and community.

That said, I think that this series provides and important opportunity to explore the ideas of death in our art and culture, and I applaud Ms. Berry for her courage and vision.

For more of this series, visit the Diemar Noble Gallery

http://www.diemarnoblephotography.com/artists/maeve-berry.html