If images are the thing that people recognize me for when I die, my life was a failure.
If images are the thing that people recognize me for when I die, my life was a failure.
I frankly don't care. The funeral isn't for me--it's part of the process of those who care about me who are left behind. (I'm sticking with the assumption that the population of those who care about me is nonzero.) If showing my pictures helps them, then fine. If not, that's fine, too. Giving them away? Whatever. Selling them? Even better.
I hope there will be other things to talk about during the eulogy, and I hope those things are about the people doing the talking, but that won't be my choice.
I recently attended a funeral for the son of a friend. His son had died of lymphoma at age 21. Our friend's eulogy was a trip through a book he'd bought when his son was born--a father-son how-to--with a rule for fathers to apply to raising their sons on every page. He took us through the pages with advice he'd not followed, celebrating the way his son overcame his father's lapses. And then he took us through the pages with the advice he'd followed, celebrating the way his son humbled him even when he thought he was doing the right thing. Finally, he read to us the last page: "And finally, you must let him go." His final words, "I guess I've failed at that one, too." My wife reached for the box of Kleenex, but she had to get it away from me first. It was obviously deeply moving, but it was also for our friend, not for his son.
Funerals are for the living. Let them decide how to conduct them.
My only rule for my own funeral is: No open casket. Cremation--whatever. But the world does not need to see my dead body, however dolled up with wax and spray paint and fancy duds.
Rick "as I used to say in San Antonio, it don't make no le hace" Denney
Wow, Rick, a heart-breaking eulogy for sure. I think I'd be blubbering like a baby...
I plead guilty – there’s nothing like contemplating one’s own death to enliven our thoughts about LF prints. As we know, all LF photographers must meet the same tragic end, so it’s interesting to hear how our prints might ennoble this fate w/ a bit of gleam, vision, and light…
A question that concerns me more is what should happen to all my prints and negs after I'm gone? Should I burn all my negs like Brett Weston did to save someone a lot of hassle? Or should I stick them all in a time capsule and bury them out the the back 40 to be found some day in the future?
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/andy8x10
Flickr Site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/62974341@N02/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.oneill.artist/
My prints have "decorated" a number of funerals and visitations--not my own, yet. One example: Ten years ago I did a photo project where I photographed my wife's grandparents. They had lived in the same house for 60 years, raised 7 children there. They moved to a retirement home and sold the house and held an auction for all house hold items. I photographed the town, the house and the grandparents. I gave sets of the prints to them and their children for Christmas one year (17 photos each). My wife's grandfather died two years after moving out of the house. I was surprised when I went to the funeral to find the entire set on display. The photo which got the most comments was a five generation photo--grandfather holding his great, great grandchild.
So you won't die from being crushed underneath a massive 60ft by 45ft "mine is ever so seriously bigger than yours" mega-ultra-giga-I-don't-have-a-life-large-format camera that you tried backpacking while climbing sheer mountain sides in an ice hurricane. And as you fall, you'll think, "Gee whiz, I should have listened to Brian and not brought 7,498 different lenses with me! All that glass and brass was so heavy..."
Enjoy your 8oz. Holga.
Me? I plan to die out in the woods so nobody knows if I'm photographing or selling prints by the side of the road. Immortality through quantum uncertainty.
"It's the way to educate your eyes. Stare. Pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." - Walker Evans
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