El autor desconocido Emiel Steegman inventa una excusa para cancelar la cita que tiene con algunos colegas estonios. Una frase obsoleta y vaga pero que transmite urgencia. Steegman decide. With old friends like these, who needs enemies?
Edward Newson is forced to ask himself, having a romantic relationship with his girlfriend. Newson is not the only member of the Class of "86 who has been raking over the ashes of the past. His old class begins to reassemble in cyberspace, the years slip away and old feuds and passions burn hot eleven more. Meanwhile, back in the present, Newson"s li.
In romantic desperation, mild-mannered detective Edward Newson logged on to the "Friends Reunited" website searching for the girlfriends of his youth. A school reunion is planned, and history begins to repeat itself, the past crashes headlong into the present. Past Mortem is both. Waiting for this to happen, it is of interest to turn our attention to some figures that have traditionally been considered, both at the legislative, jurisprudential and doctrinal level, as the poor relative of the Law of succession.
I am referring to the succession agreements and to some other businesses that, celebrated inter vivos, generate attributive post mortem effects. For many years, death was a mental and visual taboo for me, an abyss that I would never have dared to get close to…except in the world of fiction. And it was precisely by writing films that I learned to exorcise all those demons, basically because cinema forced me to reflect calmly on them and put them in their place.
Amid this reflection and searching, a mortuary album aroused my curiosity and ended up being an important part of the plot of. The Others, a perfect metaphor to talk about the dead that are living, or perhaps the contrary…. Carlos Areces has put together a thorough compilation, and, in some way, I feel that with this book a cycle starting with the elaboration of that film closes. Considered the main European expert in post-mortem photography, she has a PhD in History of Art from the Complutense University of Madrid , and her thesis is entitled Post-mortem photographic portraits in Galicia: 19th and 20th Centuries.
Her research focuses on the role of art and photography in the processes of mourning and the cult of memory, both through the photography of the deceased —from the 19th century to the present day— as well as through more contemporary art. Actor Carlos Areces is a keen collector of comics, books, albums, toys and vintage photography post mortem in particular. For more than 16 years, he has looked for them in old markets, antique shops, auction houses and websites, in Europe, USA and wherever they could be found.
Fascinated by the beauty of these old images and the vast amount of feelings they prompt, his incredible collection is reproduced in its entirety in this book, and constitutes a visual proof of what is considered the Golden Era of this practice, approximately from the middle of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century.
I have always been drawn to old photography. In my collection, dis organised into dozens of boxes, there are two main themes: communion photography prior to the Spanish Civil War and post-mortem photography.
There is something in those windows of a sepia past, in the serious faces of the children and their embroidered fabrics, that seems sinister to them and relates to the aesthetics of Victorian horror, the finitude of life and the fear that rigid religiousness instils. Post-mortem photography was common practice from the midth century up to the first third of the 20th century, although it continued for several decades after that.
I was completely mistaken. What my eyes turned into macabre was nothing but a display of infinite affection, the need to reaffirm the life footprint of a dear one, the wish to strengthen the memory of someone they loved. From our modern-day perspective, this is difficult to understand. We have technological means that allow us to physically store any given moment.
We find it hard to put ourselves in the place of those late 19th century parents who wanted to keep a memento of their child who had never been photographed while living, even if it meant delaying the burial until the photographer was available to do it. It should also be noted that death is much less common and visible in our society than back then: life expectancy was lower, infant mortality was much higher and contact with the deceased was a daily reality: the wake was at home, children posed with them, the neighbour women dressed them and the whole village came by to touch them and kiss them for the last time.
Considering that death forms an inevitable part of our life cycle, this normalization makes sense. We consider it bad taste. Cinema has contributed to our perception of it as something terrible and alien to our experience, only applied as punishment: the baddie dies, the goodie survives. That was the case with me. When my father died, the first thing I asked for was to hold the wake with the coffin closed. I had actually already seen him dead. Barely half an hour after her father.
It was someone much smaller and with ashen features who looked as if he had always been inanimate. I wonder if those 19th century relatives who ordered post-mortem photos at times had the same feeling.
0コメント