Fading
This project is centered around my thoughts on death. That sounds like a very depressing subject at first, but I don’t see it that way, and maybe after reading this you’ll understand why.
So much energy in our culture is wasted on thoughts of death. In my view, most people fall into one of two camps when thinking about death. They either worry about death too much, or they ignore the possibility of it, and pretend it isn’t there. Both these thought patterns hinder us in my opinion. By worrying too much about death we live our lives in fear of what may be, and don’t enjoy what is. Or, by not thinking enough about death, we live without appreciating how special the life we have can be.
Symbols which represent these practices to me are our graves. All animals beside humans die naturally, and in their death allow their bodies to furnish new life. Somewhere on our journey towards today, we abandoned that practice and began entombing ourselves in stone chambers to prevent our bodies from rejoining nature. Graves have become our attempt to immortalize ourselves and our impact on humanity. Through them we try to preserve ourselves so that our descendants will continue to pay attention to us.
If we are more honest with ourselves about death, I think we can live a fuller life. Death will come for us all, that is a given, but instead of worrying about it or ignoring it, we should acknowledge that we will not be here forever, and spend the time we are here being grateful for life while we have it.
To show this ideal of mine, I photographed graves, and printed them using the anthotype process. To me, graves represent our hopes for immortality. We are not immortal though, and eventually we will fade from the world. Likewise, due to the anthotype’s impermanence, these photographs too will fade from view. I hope knowing the impermanence of these photographs will encourage us to take a closer look at them while they are here, just as acknowledging the impermanence of life can help us see the beauty in it before it leaves.
