Life Before Death - Photography Exhibition at the Wellcome Collection
Life Before Death, 9th April - 18th May 2008 is a photographic exhibition about death and dying on show at the Wellcome Collection, London. Journalist Beate Lakotta and photographer Walter Schels photographed 24 terminally ill people in a hospice before and after death. These large scale paired portraits of the face with no visible backgrounds, show, for the most part, people well aware that they are dying confronting their own mortality. Their reflection on their own condition is apparent in their eyes. The extended captions elaborate on their thoughts about their final days and the fast-approaching end. Then we see them with their eyes closed, or nearly closed, in death.
See a slideshow of images from the series
It is difficult not to be moved by the subject, particularly as several young children are included (morally, a more complex issue than with the adults), and many of the adults are dying in their prime. Several people in the gallery were blinking back tears as they contemplated these images - presumably because of remembered deaths as much as the particular deaths documented.
The photographer has given great dignity to the dying and the dead - perhaps more dignity than most people actually achieve - an effect heightened by the abstraction of black and white. There is nothing shocking about the faces of the dead - most subjects here achieve great serentity and even beauty in the relaxation of death. This is an aestheticised interpretation of dying and death, but no less profound for that.
The memento mori has a long history in art and photographers have, since the earliest days, photographed the dead. But by concentrating exclusively on the faces of his subjects, and thereby minimizing some of the ravages that dying produces on the body, the photographer has produced images 
of
great psychological depth. The photographs of the dead are analogous to death masks.The stark exhibition space in the Wellcome Collection provides an appropriately minimalist context in which to display these documented endgames. Highly recommended.
Illustrated (click on the thumbnails for larger images): Heiner Schmitz aged 52. (These images are copyright Walter Schels and must not be used in any other context).
From the caption:
"What do you talk about with someone who's been sentenced to death? Some of them even say 'get well soon' as they're leaving. 'Hope you're soon back on track, mate!'"No one asks me how I feel", says Heiner Schmitz. "Because they're all shit scared. I find it really upsetting the way they desperately avoid the subject, talking about all sorts of other things. Don't they get it? I'mgoing to die! That's all I think about, every second when I'm on my own."
Listen to my thoughts about death
Listen to my thoughts on burial
Hear Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta in coversation about this project
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