The man on the motorcycle is dead. He was twenty-two, a motorcycle enthusiast, murdered and from Puerto Rico. His wish was to be embalmed and posed this way and his wish, like the wish of another murdered twenty-four year old in this country (posed standing upright in his mother’s living room for three days), was upheld. The secret to all of this, said a funeral director, is in the “special embalming”.
However bizarre this may seem, the practice of posing dead people in various tableaux is not new. It was popular in the Victorian Era when family members couldn’t afford cameras and wanted their dearly departed to be immortalized, although it was also practiced by the wealthy. It is suggested that upon Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria went into such an intense period of mourning that grief, now in vogue, became literally showcased in the bereaved mainstream. As a practice, it can be seen as an extension of memento mori (“remember you will die”), a practice of inserting images of the dead in paintings and sculpture on tombs as well as on cathedrals. Christianity embraced this sentiment as it is especially moralizing and wishes to teach the woeful idea that life is short, tempus fugit, and you better not sin.
Although creepy through modern eyes, it must not be forgotten that death was a frequent visitor in homes at this period. Infant and childhood mortality were common and children saw death as a part of life. Today, death and children are kept as remote from one another as possible as lost ones release their spirits in hospitals and nursing homes.
All of the people in the photographs, save a few, are dead. The deceased were held upright using special stands with clamps, their eyes propped open or pupils painted unconvincingly on the photographs. The girl at the top of the article is a fourteen year old in her wedding dress. Her name was Margaret Rose. The bottom image of a man and child, ostensibly father and son, are both deceased.
SueInCa
choicelady
AdLib
Kalima
Khirad
Unto Ashes -- Funeral March for Queen Mary; of Purcell, Clockwork Orange fame, reinterpreted in even colder tones:
The amazing Tim Eriksen:
He is great. It’s funny how this type of tune and it’s delivery does seem to mitigate some aspect of the “big sleep”. Shocking image at the end!
Report comment
Yes. Not the standard image of a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology.
He plays about five instruments and can do that Tuva dual-voice singing thing, too. I’m very jealous.
Report comment
I was thinking that he plays violin with a Tuva flavor. Very talented and I shall be looking for his stuff. Thanks kes!
Report comment
If I’m not mistaken, he studied in India and vicinity, so your sensitive ears must have picked that up. You’re very welcome!
Report comment
On a lighter note! Woody Allen, “Sleeper”
(Fast forward to 3:06)
Hee, hee, I went to a little tiny theater (It was literally a giant log cabin) in the mountains to see that movie with a friend when I was about 8, and I thought it was great. My parents would have been horrified if they had known how subversive it was.
Report comment
Part of that was filmed at NCAR in Boulder.
Report comment
Excuse my bad manners, just wanted to let you know that I fixed the MB link before I nod off again.
Report comment
Bad manners and Kalima don’t belong in the same sentence– Thank you!! Sleep well and sweet dreams.
Report comment
Gosh, Kalima– what a beautiful thing to wake up to! Lump in throat– so evocative.
Report comment
*** WARNING– GRAPHIC CONTENT****
This whole thread is a keeper. (Not that what I am about to write will make add to that excellence but I just want to re-participate.)
So in another lifetime I was a biomedical illustrator. There is actually a certification program for that, and I took some classes at UCLA. For our final drawing, we had to illustrate the circulatory system. Our instructor suggested we go to a butcher and try to obtain a cow’s heart in lieu of the human kind. I tried to do that, but was told by a couple of butchers that they are required to slice up the cow’s heart to look for any parasites. Hmmm, what to do?
I got on the phone and called some medical departments at the university, saying that I was a student and explaining my assignment. In no time, I walked into some brain research office and the guy in charge listened to my spiel and said, “Come with me.”
We walked down a few hallways and just before he pushed open some double doors he turned to me and asked, “You’ve been in here before, right?”
“Oh, sure”, I said, having no idea where we were.
As you may have guessed, it was the morgue. Thank God, I didn’t start to giggle, as is my pattern when I get nervous. It was amazing– not at all what I expected. There was row after row of what I can only describe as giant steel breadboxes. Actually, gurneys with stainless steel domes over them.
He opened a couple until he found a cadaver that still had an intact heart. None of these bodies was untouched– it was the end of the semester and the medical students had pretty much messed them up. But here’s the thing– they looked no more human to me than does meat. They were preserved; no blood or gore at all. I’m sorry if this causes nausea, but that’s the truth– or maybe just my way of dealing with my first encounter with a cadaver.
Anyway, he reached into the breadbox-type encasement and gave me a heart. It was smaller than I thought but he reminded me– it’s fist-size.
Before he put it into my art box, he looked at me and said he knew I would treat this with the utmost respect and that I would honor the person who had so generously donated his body. I assured him I absolutely would. Also, I was to return it to him for disposal.
What an experience. I took it home for dissection the next day, but my then-husband freaked when he saw it in the refrigerator. And I had a very hard time dissecting it, but I did get an A in that class. No one else had used a real heart– no one even tried.
Sorry if that was too gross!
Report comment
Fascinating story Cher – very cool about the consciousness toward retaining the ex-live one’s (cadaver’s) respect & very debrouillard (a great French word for which there’s no real English translation, but) meaning : figuring it out & solving it) ….of you to have gone to the actual source.
I think I’d have a hard time seeing the dead, esp. chopped up !, but in the way you describe it, it might seem much more clinical & less macabre than it sounds –
& I agree : a keeper of a thread !
Report comment
That actually didn’t gross me out. It’s pretty much the blood, gore, and actual scalpel work that does.
I also really appreciated that he put importance to respecting the person it came from.
Still, I have more years to deal with this, but I still can’t deal with having my body cut up like that.
I know my shyness will be of no concern then, but imagining it… just takes me to Poescapes.
The weird thing would be the refrigerator. Actually, it was all pretty weird. But, weird is interesting!
I know what you mean about the fist thing. You know it, but still. Never held an actual one though… that would probably give me weird dreams too, like the Telltale Heart or something.
Thanks for the warning though.
I’m a contradiction – drawn to the funereal and vampires, but get squeamish with blood, and when a friend tried to show me the morgue in Oregon Health and Science University, I totally chickened out and got pale.
I can’t figure myself out sometimes…
Report comment
LOL – this made me laugh because I guess we always remain contradictions in a way –
I can also get grossed out by “too much human” in live folk, meaning, if it’s gross (body odor, bad breath etc.), I get disgusted easily.
I keep thinking I have solid views on many things, esp. those that affect me personally, but then, I’m also apt to change my mind occasionally –
With regards to gore, I’m right there with you and (though I’m not particularly proud of this)
Another admission : I wasn’t cut out (no pun intended) to be a nurse or doctor at ALL !
Have no bent toward clinically delving into human bodies, except in that fun way
As for my body parts when I’m gone ?
Report comment
Have at ‘em, but a disclaimer : don’t laugh at my freckles, moles or wrinkles – otherwise, I want my body back !
That’s two of us that weren’t cut out (!) for the medical field (especially surgery).
Yes, I’m with you on the body odor and general hygiene. I don’t always judge someone by it (I was stinking the other day with the humidity and airport nightmare when I caught wind of myself) – but if you have access to a shower, – take one. I know I couldn’t wait to.
Donating is the right thing to do. What will I need anything for? I can’t explain it, I just maybe don’t like to think about it – and perhaps maybe I should think more about the person I could help instead, like a non-selfish person.
The thing with my body parts is that I could also try donating my lungs and liver as a joke?
Report comment
Cher, that was not at all gross! When I take the final nap, I think it would be a great consolation to know that a medical student or medical illustrator was going to make some legitimate use of my “parts.” What else would they be good for at that point?
That said, I have to admit that I find the photos with this article inexplicably creepy. Possibly because — unlike the learning process of dissection or the artistic process of depiction in medical illustrations — these seem to have little or no “redeeming value.” Or if they do, I guess I’m too thick to get it. Maybe they were, in some way, consoling to the survivors. But somehow, for myself, I must say I would be completely weirded out by posing for a photo with a standing, embalmed family member beside me. Just me…
Report comment
Not gross! By the end of first year in med school, we were eating lunch with our cadavers. I only ventured tea and Drake’s coffee cakes. It’s really the formaldehyde that is gross.
By the time the cadavers are up for dissection, they are kind of a greyish brown and pickled.
You had the privilege of holding a human heart. That can never be gross!
Should we call you Mme Netter?
Report comment
I too was once fascinated with this, Q. By the way, ever heard of these guys? What was ancient is now New Age, go fig.
http://www.summum.org/mummification/process.shtml
Report comment
That just seems so egotistical, no?
Report comment
I never knew one could be mummified these days, commercially. That it takes 90 days intimates cost. I do like the idea of being encased in bronze. I would love the patina!
Report comment
These guys I found out about from this:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Surpeme_Court_to_hear_Ten_Commandments_1111.html
Turns out, I pulled down a copy I have of the Kybalion, and was right, Their Seven Aphorisms are drawn from this book I picked up at a local book sale and stashed in the back of my bookcase near other crazy crap (why I pick up this stuff, I don’t know, it’s a compulsion).
Now me, and everyone will think it horrible, would – if money were no object – have a fabulous mausoleum, housing family and everything. To me it’s art, and having visited old graveyards, many crumble and are forgotten in time, anyway. I used to think of it as wasting space, but I think of graveyards as parks, in a way. During a stressful day, the graveyard can be the most peaceful place to be, and a great place to reflect. I would also have benches and encourage people to sit on them (I love people that have marble benches in lieu of a traditional stone).
I love epitaphs, what people choose as their final words. What they choose to represent themselves.
Yes, the practice of burial is ancient, and in its Christian form ridiculous (I think the same God that created you could do it over again without a body or fragments of bones). But, I still see myself being buried, though it’s not a religious thing, and does go against my sensibilities like others mention when choosing cremation (the zirconium is another option that is pretty cool).
Come to think of it I’ve never gotten to my copy of the Book of the Dead… I should study up in preparation for the weighing of Anubis and so I know the correct incantations (the ultimate secret society passwords).
But yes, patina is always an extra plus! I want the sarcophagus with fancy painting, gold and jewels too!
Talk about a fabulous way to spend the afterlife!
http://www.summum.org/mummification/media/images/mummieshires.jpg
Report comment
Oh, my! I didn’t think of jewels!
Report comment
Whoa there Q and Lise! The baby is the one still living, right? You’re so right– we look mahvelous!
Report comment
No, both father and child are dead.
Report comment
Oh god, that’s a tearjerker!
Report comment
I can’t imagine being the wife.
Segue-ing into your Photoshop piece, I could see how retouching becomes a hyper-ideal spin on what can be, on the face of it, a very painful reality. The more one is able to look at the ultra-processed (embalmed really) and get lost in it, the more remote the crude “Photoshopped” people, like the ones above, seem.
Report comment
O/T : I got stuck here in the office, watching the Correspondent’s dinner –
You guys HAVE to watch it – President Obama is in top form funny !
Report comment
Obama ROCKED!!
Report comment
I never understood the whole displaying the dead body thing myself.
My wife and I decided we would both be cremated and turned into lab made diamonds. All that’s left over is carbon and some salts anyway. We both think trying to saving a dead body is just a waste.
I don’t now if you ever caught one of Dr. Boden’s “Autopsy” series episodes where this freak named Dr. Carl Von Cosel kept” his lover’s dead body for decades. There were signs it was “violated” regularly as well.
http://hbopayperviewespanol.com/autopsy/episode/episode_6_the_strange_obsession_of_dr_carl_von_cosel.html
Report comment
Did anybody see this exhibit? It was actually awesome.
I’m squeemish at the sight of blood, and that was an informative, but incredibly uncomfortable exhibit to go through for me. Plus, the ethical thing seemed exploitative to me (though none were the dissidents, they said, at least one was of a German woman who drowned herself before the waivers legality). I had bad dreams for like a week.
But, for those studying anatomy, it’d be cool. All I could think throughout was who their mothers, sisters, etc were, and with the young athletes, what untimely demise they had to have met. I couldn’t help but imagine the story of their lives. In the state I saw them, they were so anonymous. I know this was their wish, but I just couldn’t disassociate and compartmentalize cold science from humanity.
This is why being a doctor was never even entertained by me, ever. I don’t have that ability.
Report comment
You’d be surprised how desensitized one becomes. By the end of the year, we were having lunch next to our cadavers.
I could never get used to the buckets of hands and feet though.
Report comment
Wow! Reminiscent of Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”.
Report comment
Yes indeed – that’s what tears & grieving are all about -
Report comment
I wouldn’t want to experience life without even its most grave set-backs. Utopia doesn’t exist & if it did, we might not have been afforded the wisdom to develop empathy & compassion.
Q – I keep responding to your posts & then they’re gone & mine just sit there, sticking out like a sore thumb !
Report comment
This one was in regards to experiencing pain in the death of loved ones.
Now, sit still !
I think they were ghosts, Lise.
Report comment
And at this point, I’m going to bid whoever’s still here adios -
Report comment
Going home to my warm place, eat some & read my book.
Goodnight all !
Good night Lise, have a great evening, sorry I was called away to break up a cat fight and now I must start to cook Sunday Brunch.
Take care.
Report comment
Night Lise. For some reason, it got awfully quiet.
Report comment
White House Correspondents’ Dinner.???
That’s where I am.
Report comment
If I were sent such a picture after death, I’d have a strong urge to draw a Groucho nose or Alfred E. Newman face on them ….& think of them smiling, happy & vital in life
Report comment
Ooops, to your comment below, Q -
Report comment
Often these photographs were turned into “cartes de visites” and sent to distant relatives. Perhaps to relatives who never saw their kin alive.
Report comment
What a topic, Q, and such strange photos! Wow! In Japan, it is customary for immediate family members, including the lil’ones, to sleep in the same room, alongside the deceased, until the funeral. By our thinking, we might assume it is to impress upon people the transience of life, but I am pretty sure the Japanese don’t see it that way at all. I think it’s more the feeling that the deceased person has not fully made the transition, and wants to have his/her family around until that happens. So although it might, and frequently does, scare the children, it’s not really about them, but about the needs of the departed. On the other hand, as a foreigner, it’s probably more accurate to confess that I don’t fully understand the practice,
Report comment
This is not uncommon. Three days seems to be a recurring number, as well (for the soul to find its way).
Report comment
Though I respect peoples’ choice of tradition, I can’t say I’d feel comfortable with that particular one, if it were with regard to my own kids – strikes me as fodder for early-in-life nightmares ….
Report comment
I think it all turns on how it is contextualized. If the parents tell the kids that they are going to sleep with Grandma’s soul so that she won’t be afraid as she makes her transition, the children might actually feel good about it.
Report comment
That’s a very good point WTS – you’re right -
Report comment
Context IS everything. I attempted to do that here. To show these pictures as not creepy, but as products of the times.
Report comment
Hmm, “sleep in the same room, alongside the deceased, until the funeral”.
Sounds like many marriages.
Report comment
LOL!!! Maybe that’s why some cases of older people co-existing with long dead spouses happen. They did not notice. I see that happening more with living wives than husbands since generally the old guy’d notice no one had made his coffee. (She said cynically.)
Report comment
And no coffee has been implicated in the shortened life spans of widowers upon their wives’ deaths.
Report comment
ba dum dum!
Report comment
LOL, Q !! Oh yeah, I’m sure that’s true ….
Report comment
Good Lord Q, I’d rather just be stuffed and mounted!
Report comment
Don’t you mean mounted and stuffed?
Report comment
Oh my goodness, a girl after my own heart LOL !
Report comment
You young lady have a one-track mind, but actually you are correct.
Report comment
Finally, we’re here in the same zone, if not time-zone – allo, Kalima !
Report comment
Allo Lise and good evening too!
Report comment
My late uncle, a delightfully attractive and distinguished man with a glorious sense of humor, suggested his wife mount his head, pipe clenched in mouth, and put it over the fireplace with the fireplace smoke curling up out of the pipe.
It would have suited him.
Report comment
He does sound as though he was gloriously well-adjusted – the concept of death best be approached that way, otherwise, it’d be a bit harder to live with -
Report comment
LOL cl, sort of like a trophy, great sense of humour indeed.
Report comment
Note the interesting photographic treatment in the background of the album cover once you click on it –
Blood, Sweat & Tears – And when I die ….
Report comment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Omtd44Y-s
Embedding not allowed but a good soundtrack -