Last weekend we celebrated Josh’s 24th birthday. ĂÂ We also had the real pleasure of having the two Dutch guys who were traveling with Josh at theĂÂ time of his accident, come to stay. ĂÂ ĂÂ Dominique Zondervan and Don Zweedijk”s visit was a very special moment as they were the last people to spend time with Josh before he died. ĂÂ They had only known Josh for two weeks so it was also a good opportunity for them to find out more about him from all his friends here.
(click on any photo to go to gallery)
seated on the bench - Don on the left and Dominique
Joshua’s younger sister, Rosa is currently studying on a Foundation Art course at Oxford Brookes University. We are reproducing here an essay she has written as part of her course which explores the themes of photography and death and the way we use the medium as a way of creating memorials to people’s lives. In this essay Rosa posits some very challenging questions – how far, she asks, is the act of taking someone’s photograph a subconscious attempt “to protect ourselves for when that person dies?” To answer this she examines the work of ĂÂ three very different artists – the American photographer Nan Goldin who captured some of the most intimate and moving images from New York’s gay scene of the 1970’s and 80’s – London based photographer Briony Campbell’s whose “The Dad Project” was a way of saying goodbye with her camera to her father as he lay dying from cancer – and the work ĂÂ I have produced since Josh’s death, in particular my book “Released”.
I am seriously moved by Rosa’s ability and her desire to use her university projects as a way of understanding what her own work now means in the light of Joshua’s death and for being prepared to share those thoughts with us. ĂÂ ĂÂ (Jimmy)
Making it Real – Death and Photography
In my essay I will be exploring how we take photographs of loved ones with the possibly subconscious aim to memorialise that person after they have died and look at the ways in which we can turn found photos of a lost loved one into prominent memorials of their life.
How far is taking a photograph of someone a response to our fear of death? Is their fear their fear or is it ours? What power does the photograph hold? Does it comfort us in our grief and why? When images of death are all around us, why do we shy away from post-mortem images of people we have known and loved?
I will be structuring the essay around the three stages of taking images as a memorial that I have concluded from some of my research:
-ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ Taking images before someone has died, when they are certainly alive and healthy yet, with the subconscious idea that the photograph will almost certainly outlive them.
-ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ Taking images of someone as they physically die, a concept that is almost unheard of in our culture. I ask could this be a way of helping us prepare for their death?
-ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ Finally, taking and using images of the person after they have died.
NAN GOLDIN – keeping the memory alive
For a long time the work of New York photographer, Nan Goldin has inspired and influenced my own work. She takes very personal and intimate images of her close friends. She photographs them relaxing at their houses, their drug use and abuse and during sex. Nan Goldinâs body of work is often very shocking to the greater public and has frequently acted as an expose of life during the AIDS epidemic. She recorded some of the most intimate moments of herself and of her friendsâ lives.
Goldin grew up in Boston,ĂÂ âin the very middleâ of a middle class neighbourhood. When Nan was 11 her older sister who was 18 committed suicide. In Goldinâs documentary film, âIâll be your mirrorâ, she implies that her sisterâs death was a catalyst not just for her photography in general but also for the intimate and personal style of her images.
After leaving college she moved to New Yorkâs lower East Side where she began documenting the post âstonewallâ gay scene of the late seventies –âinstead of dying at 18, I started to photograph.â Goldin now acknowledges that her sisterâs untimely death really shaped her photography in a very subconscious way. She reflects on her photography in the documentary commenting that she âbecame obsessed with never losing the memory of anyone againâ. The irony of course was that by the 1990âs many of her subjects were dead either from aids or from drug overdoses. Goldinâs photographs use an intimate snapshot aesthetic and read rather like a private diary made public. The images all show real moments and real people and let the viewer into her life.
Iniatially Goldin took photographs for her personal use. But doĂ portraits taken as a commission or for more public viewing Ă have the same âdeath instinctâ? British photographer David Bailey believes they do:Ă âPhotography is all about death really⌠you look at [old] pictures-theyâre always dead. You donât look at a painting and think âsheâs deadâ but you look at a photograph and think âsheâs dead!â
Do we all take photographs of the people that we love to capture them in case of death or to protect ourselves for when that âsubjectâ dies? When you are taking an image of a loved one it transforms from just a photograph into a memory, a character and a relationship. This is the element for me, which makes the works of artists such as Goldin so significant and so beautiful.
Cookie Mueller – 1981
âThe Cookie Portfolioâ as Goldin names it, is a series of fifteen photographs taken over thirteen years of Cookie Mueller â âthe starlet of the Lower East Sideâ and the âqueen of the downtown social sceneâ. The images illustrate Cookieâs character and vitality yet also captures her deterioration and eventual death from AIDS in 1989.
âI used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. I put together this series of pictures of Cookie from the 13 years I knew her in order to keep her with me. In fact they show me how much Iâve lost.â
âThe Cookie Portfolioâ is an excellent example of the way a photographic record of anyone can come to have such a power after they have died.
Goldinâs dilemma highlights a basic contradiction in all photographic portraits especially those of people who have then died; their photograph has an incredible likeness of being to the subject, it invites us to accept consolation from their living image yet, it can also a painful reminder that they are now gone.
The last image in Goldinâs Cookie Portfolio is of Cookie in her coffin. It is extraordinary that in a series of photographs intended to keep the memory of her friend alive that she would include a photograph of her corpse.
Extraordinary not just because of Goldinâs fear of losing her friends âlivingâ memory, but more because in her life and her art she is surrounded by the deaths of those close to her yet, this picture of Cookie in her coffin is one of only a very few she has published of a dead friend. Sex, drugs, deviance, yes â death, no.
However, rewind to the nineteenth century and images of dead people, especially babies, were very common, socially accepted and even valued. At this time, infant mortality was very high and a lot of the time there wouldnât be enough time to make a photograph of the child before it had died. So the families would photograph the deceased openly and unfortunately this occurred often as in those days infant death was more commonplace.
While images of death as part of our daily news intake, such as the killing of Bin Laden, are quite acceptable, people who now want a post-mortem record can face social opprobrium if they were to take a picture or commission someone to do so. People on the television and in the newspapers remain characters and donât seem to be real people but people donât want to acknowledge the death of someone close to them by taking a photograph. Similarly, a lot of people live in the mindset that if we donât acknowledge death by photographing it then maybe it hasnât happened.
When my own brother Joshua died last year and I went to see his body in the funeral parlour I didnât take a photograph. It was impossible for me to do so not only because I was using all of my emotional energy to process what was happening leaving no room for the camera, also it simply isnât the done thing nowadays.
Perhaps for Goldin who lived through her camera and often shielded herself with it, taking the picture of Cookieâs corpse was a necessary confirmation of her death. For me, the support of my family meant that there was no need to record his lifeless form for posterity – above all it was just too painful.
From personal experience Iâve learnt that we tend to shy away from photographs that depict images of the dead especially when the deceased Ă is a loved one. Yet, it is surprising that in popular contemporary culture, there are still few acceptable ways of recording the rituals surrounding death and mourning process. When families get together it is often around important moments such as births, marriages and funerals, the latter being the event least photographed. Unlike weddings, there is no industry for funeral photography or videos. This seems strange to me, as death is the only inevitable event in someoneâs life. After my brothers death, we as a family collected all the pictures of Josh that we could – a hugely important part of our efforts to come to terms with our loss; these were of course all pictures of Josh alive. Overnight, they had all become memorial photographs â each snapshot acquiring more poignancy⌠and over time these âfoundâ images of Joshua have gained even more significance being used over and over again: at the funeral, parties, memorial days, and given to people as gifts. For example, the images below were both images which gained significance from their first use as his business card, now as a memento for people to put in their wallets and on their walls to remember Josh.Ă Like Goldin we were using his photograph as a way of keeping Joshua alive.
Above – the photograph Josh used for his business card
This image was reproduced and given to mourners at Josh’s funeral
Images, like the ones of Josh, seem to become an icon of a personâs life. On the surface we take images to represent memories and relationships but, when a tragedy happens, I have realised that maybe we take images to prematurely memorialise that character and protect ones self from the inevitable. The images grant us with satisfaction by showing an exact visual replication of that person whilst still alive but at the same time the photos will now always be a reminder that they are now not alive.
JIMMY EDMONDS – RELEASED – the photographic illusion
A few weeks later after we received his ashes back from the crematorium, my father, Jimmy Edmonds, started on a photographic project that would be both a memorial to my brother and a record of the way our family was dealing with our loss.
RELEASED - ash clouds §6
This project was published with the title RELEASED. ĂÂ ĂÂ It can be seen in full here. ĂÂ He started by photographing Josh’s ashes; he captured them pouring through the air and the clouds of dust that they created.
He then experimented with laying the ashes on top of the photograph shown above of Joshua that had gained significance from being used at the funeral and over and over again. When put together, the ashes and the image formed conflicting ideas: on the one hand, we can see Josh alive, with him looking back to us, placing us in an illusion letting us believe that he is still alive, but the ashes tell us that he is most definitely dead.
The thing about a photograph is that even though it captures a moment in time it will almost always outlive its subject matter. My Dad wanted to find a way of making images that more accurately reflected the long process of mourning. Again using a photograph heâd taken of Josh, the one used as his business card, he hand printed them using a nineteenth century technique that used vegetable juice and sunlight – anthotypes. He then combined these bright red images with the ashes and physically stuck the two together. There is no way to fix an anthotype print – in time they will fade. Over time all that will remain will be the ashes of Josh. Nearly all photographs act as an aide-memoir and as such are deceptive. This series of images speaks more to our current reality of life without Josh.
My father was able to use the ashes as a creative material and make some beautiful images not only for the people that knew Josh but also for many people that did not know him. They felt privileged and touched that he had âlet them inâ to such a tender and normally private part of ĂÂ our family life by witnessing Joshâs actual ashes as a piece of art.
âAll that remains will be â all that remains.â
BRIONY CAMPBELL – saying goodbye with her camera
My father had time to think about his project – (when someone dies, it is after all forever!). When Briony Campbell’s father was diagnosed with cancer he was told that he had just nine months to live. Briony decided to document this with a series of photographs and an accompanying video called The Dad Project. Unlike Goldin’s work, this was a very much conscious process where both father and daughter collaborated. Each of them had to think carefully about what doing this project would mean for them both:
âI agonised for months over whether I should attempt to photograph our relationship at allâ.
We learn from her video that for her father the project meant getting to know his daughter in new ways and spending the last of his days doing something worthwhile and productive. For Briony it was more of a way to say goodbye. She was able to use her camera as a medium to do this, but I suspect that at times it was also a way to distance herself from the reality of the situation.
âEach day that brought his imminent death into sharper focus, my project became more of a crutch, and more of a member of the family. When we had nothing to be positive about, the project gave us a way to be productiveâ
For my father the photographic process he undertook was more of a reflection on my brotherâs death once he had already gone. Campbellâs project was of the moment and dealt with the emotions she had as her father was dying. She did not know what was going to happen next or when exactly he would die from his terminal illness:
âWhen you find out youâre going to lose someone you love you donât know what the story is, so you really canât plan how to tell it.â
When we think of images of a dying family member many people are likely to conjure up stereotypical images associated with death – morbid and painful images that could capture pain, suffering, fear or a variety of other negative emotions associated with death. Of course Campbellâs âThe Dad Projectâ series includes those images. But Campbell also creates a story about love. She does this by creating beautiful photographs in a hopeless situation. The video includes humorous chats with her father and I found myself smiling whilst watching it. Similarly, amongst the heartfelt, painful images are picturesque images of light and colour.
âIf it were a painful moment, I tried to make the picture more aesthetically beautifulâ.
“Today we knew he would die soon. I went outside and looked at the sky while we waited for the ambulance.”
The series contains both pictures of Campbellâs father as well as some self-portraits although, I would argue that the self-portraits are images of her father dying too. I think these are some of the most important images in the series as they show her bravery. To let people see you at your weakest and most vulnerable I find really incredible. In my opinion these self-portraits fuse the series together as they put the whole thing into context by showing not only the experience of the fatherâs illness but also the impact the illness has on his daughter. This has the result of humanising the whole process. Death here is not a news item, but an everyday occurence.
By taking the images of her father with the conscious aim to memorialise the pictures even before he died, to then take images of herself shows a great understanding and coming to terms with death in general. By photographing herself she is essentially preparing herself for when she dies and exploring this through the images – for me, she is memorialising herself in the images using the same idea of taking a photograph to be there when you are dead.
Most of memorial photography exists of images of smiling people aiming to remember the happy times of a personâs life. Campbellâs work is more of a realistic representation of death and includes photographs that are undoubtedly hard to look at, though the series does also include happy and amusing images. By creating a more rounded view of death and dying, Campbell has somehow reduced the fear that many people have of death. I was able to relate to this by thinking back to the funeral we held for Josh. On the day I felt a bit strange that I wasnât sad all of the time and I felt quite at ease and cheerful at points through out the day â a lot of our friends said they enjoyed the day and I wouldnât necessarily disagree.
Part of life is that everyone has to die. It is inevitable. At the very least, The Dad Project, opens a door to people and lets them in to this delicate journey.
What becomes clear is that although all three photographers are responding to their encounter with death in very different ways, they are all using photography as a way of coming to terms with loss. For Goldin, photographing her friends is a kind of insurance policy, creating mementos for when they are no longer here. Campbell documents the journey into death in a truly collaborative way and my father is trying to produce new images from my brothers actual remains. And by confronting death and making it real they all go some way to dispelling our fears.
Rosa Harris Edmonds
April 2012
Links
Keep up to date with what I am doing at university and in my personal projectsĂÂ here and here.
Briony’s film, ‘Saying goodbye with my camera’ can ĂÂ be seen here.
Briony’s photographs of ‘The Dad Project’ can be seen here.
I have just watched this film about Philip Gould, (mate of Tony Blair’s and architect of New Labour) who chronicled the last few weeks of his life before succumbing to oesophageal cancer in November last year at the age of 61. For the moment I’m stunned but will write more later ….
We have received these words from Claire Gale (Claire is mum to one of Josh’s best friends Holly – pictured)
Through your unselfish, unbounded ĂÂ ĂÂ and open love for your son, your brother, you have allowed our sons and daughters to learn to grieve openly. To touch ĂÂ Josh, to talk, to be close to you, to be included and have a say, and we thank you for that.
Through your extraordinary creativity, your shared expression of your loss, you have brought life into death, death into life, with honesty and openness.
Through new ways, words, messages, they learn things will never be the same. Time is not a healer, they just miss him more and there is no meaning to what has happened to you all. And they, you, we, try to live around that.
Through your sensitivity, your care, your inclusion, your open arms, you allow new friendships, deeper love and a safety in knowing that it is ok not to be ok.
Through your grief we see you. Who you were, who you are, and now we begin to understand that your beautiful son was so special and wonderful and loved by so many because of you. ĂÂ And so, we must continue to love, express and create for you and him, and us and them.
Many people find it hard to know what to say or to do when meeting with a friend who has been bereaved. ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ It has been difficult for us and for our friends to find a way to share painful and confusing feelings about Joshua’s death. ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ In one sense these past months have been a steep learning curve as we’ve struggled to comfort one another. ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ ĂÂ What are the right words? ĂÂ How can I make things better? ĂÂ ĂÂ Even subtle avoidance of talking about Josh. ĂÂ ĂÂ So I have gathered ĂÂ some of my own thoughts as well as words from others that I feel sum up what can be helpful.
(Jane)
Please talk about my loved one, even though he is gone. ĂÂ ĂÂ It is more comforting than pretending he never existed.
Be patient with my agitation. Nothing feels secure in my world.
Don’t abandon me with the excuse that you don’t want to upset me. You can’t catch my grief. ĂÂ My world is painful and when you are too afraid to call or visit or say anything, you isolate me at a time when I most need to be included. If you don’t know what to say, you can just say that “I don’t know what to say, but I care and want you to know that.”
I will not recover. This is not a cold or the flu. I’m not sick. I am grieving and that’s different. My grieving may only begin 6 months after my loved one’s death. Don’t think that I will be over it in a year. My whole world has changed and I will never be the same.
I will not always be grieving so intensely but I will never forget and rather than recover, I want to include his life and love into the rest of my life.
I don’t understand what you mean when you say ” you’ve got to get on with your life”……..my life is going on.
Don’t tell me that everything happens for a reason. Some things in life are unacceptable.
Please don’t say “call if you need anything”……I will never call as I have no idea what I need but here are some ideas that may help. ĂÂ ĂÂ Send me a card on special holidays, his birthday and the anniversary of his death, and be sure to mention his name. You can’t make me cry. The tears are here already and I will love you for giving me the opportunity to shed them because someone cared enough to reach out on this difficult day.
Ask me more than once to join you for lunch, a film or a walk and please don’t give up on me because somewhere down the line, I may be ready and if you have given up then I really will be alone.
Understand how different every social situation feels and how out of place I can feel where I used to feel so comfortable.
Don’t worry if I seem to be getting stronger and then suddenly I seem to slip backwards. Grief is like that. ĂÂ And please don’t tell me you know how I feel or that it’s time to get on with my life. What I need now is time to grieve.
Most of all thank you for being my friend and for your patience. Thank you for caring.
And in the days or years ahead, after your loss- when you need me as I have needed you- I will understand. And I will come and be with you.
In the 15 months that my brother has since passed I have experienced a wave of different emotions and a sense of huge loss. A loss of my brother as a person, a soul and a presence in my life. I have also sensed so much loss within my own perspectives and feelings in life as it has continued. What is deemed important or worth concentration has skewered from the path it once was on and feelings of real joy, happiness and love, suffocated and laid aside to a point where at times forgotton. Forgotten to the point where it has been hard to believe that they can ever exist again?
I was travelling to work this afternoon listening to my Ipod as I walked across the concourse at Stratford listening to the playlist I have of 10 tracks that I now associate most deeply with my brother Joshua. I was in deep thought thinking of Josh and my loss. This playlist supports me in my way to be with my brother and often brings emotion with it…..sadness, pride and most importantly of all, a feeling of closeness that I can only now hold onto as best I can that re-connects me with Josh.
As I approached the stairs I had to stop in my tracks as for what certainly felt like the first time, I felt an acute sense of love for the world and with it, a realisation that I have an ability to love the world. To love the world whilst still being able to grieve for my brother.
For a moment…..I felt a clarity that I had not felt before between my sadness of my loss and my ability to love and see opportunity ahead for what life has.
I wanted to share this experience as it seemed at the time a very new sensation and one that I feel was and hopefully will be important for me in days, weeks, months ahead. To be able to re-visit and also move forward with where possible.
We all get quite a few messages from far and wide telling us how much Josh is missed – ĂÂ today Joe received this note on his Facebook page from a friend of Josh’s
“I miss your brother so much, Joe…. Some people talk and some people can express who they are through their eyes and Josh was someone who when you looked into his eyes you could read so much”
He then continued .. “I hope you are not offended by me sending you this message ….ĂÂ Not sure I should be burdening you with my emotions but wanted you to know () how much I miss him.”
When Jane read the message she wondered why he feels he’d be a burden by sharing his sadness.
“Being bereaved can be lonely but this is largely because of peoples discomfort about being around bereaved people. ĂÂ Mainly because THEY feel uncomfortable and don’t know how to BE. ĂÂ But this is a ĂÂ two way thing. I know sometimes I can’t be bothered with people. But its also important for us to let people know what WE need and help them to talk about it if they want to.”
Here’s a great review from our friend Jack Nathan about Jane and Joes talk at the festival of death for the living …………………………………………….
Attending the âEverything you always wanted to know about funerals (but were afraid to ask)â session was always going to be painful. I went in dread and âexcitedâ anticipation as I knew I was going to hear from two panel members, Jane (mother) and Joe (brother), talking about surviving the profound and still raw grief of losing Josh: a young man lost to an arbitrary event, euphemistically labelled, âa road traffic accidentâ, thousands of miles from home, whilst on a âtrip of his lifetimeâ in Vietnam. Continue reading →
Tom was on the train to work when he read about Josh’s accident on Facebook and wonders whether social media with all their trivialities are the best place to be dealing with death and grief. But ĂÂ he also suggests thatĂÂ “for all the scare stories about social networks eroding cultural values, they equally offer a very traditional form of support during difficult times. And if they make speaking about â and therefore coping with â death a little easier for us collectively then that is surely only a benefit to society, however we end up redrawing the lines of etiquette and media behaviour.”
I find this a fascinating idea – if only because our friend Jessica Nathan (she of wonderful voice at Josh’s funeral) also commented – “people don’t really die on-line” ĂÂ – discuss!
Here’s a link to an interview we did with Patrick McNally of THE DAILY UNDERTAKER Patrick asked some very interesting questions about how we organised Josh’s funeral, why we chose to “do it ourselves”, what it meant for us to create our own funeral rite for Josh.
“I was so driven by the wish not to be afraid that Josh was dead but had no idea how to do that but by the end of the celebration of his life I somehow felt a lot less afraid than I had done.” Jane
“Two young police officers had brought us the news of Joshuaâs death and for his body to be committed by more unknowns felt just too much â you canât hug a policeman, neither did I feel like hugging an undertaker â it felt like the only way to properly deal with this was to gather family and friends around and share our grief, and not just for half an hour at the âcremâ. Jimmy