Wake Photographer
by Suzanne Strempek Shea
JUNE 16, 2009 TAGS:
I spotted the black-and-white photograph on the bureau in my grandmother's guest room, peeking from the space between an African violet and the mirror. A natural snoop, I pulled the image into view, finding a round-faced pageboyed blonde girl in Sunday-best houndstooth jacket and skirt. She was 7 or 8, around my age at the time, her primly gloved hands holding the chain of a black purse. I pulled the print another inch to the right and her mother appeared. Same shade hair (though in beehive), same shell-shocked look on her globe face.
Like the daughter, she was dressed for an evening out. Elegant dark dress with buttons the size of silver dollars. But nothing about the pair's expressions anticipated a happy occasion. It was anything but, I learned as I pulled the rest of the photograph free and saw the man in his casket.
Suddenly, all the elements connected to make sense, like the squares of the Concentration board at the end of the game show so popular at the time. Now I noticed the floral sprays behind mother and daughter, the ruched satin of the inner lid against which rested a heart-shaped arrangement. And, below that, the father in suit and tie and even eyeglasses, looking like someone who'd just stepped from his desk for a nap. But who, instead, was lying in a casket, his family next to him, posing for a picture.
I was astonished: my grandmother had a photo of some dead guy. I wondered who would want such a thing? And who would take such a thing?
In a couple of years, I would answer those questions: 1: Lots of people. 2: Me.
During my teens, I photographed the dead. I preferred the usual relatives, dog, boyfriend, but I focused on less lively subjects each time a relative or close family friend died. Along with rosary beads and tissues, I brought Canon and flash to the wake.
Relatives in the old country were awaiting a last look at the beloved and, without a photograph in those pre-email/video/webcam early '70s, how else could they see him or her? My parents volunteered me for the job, creating both an unusual skill for my resume and an opportunity to continue a custom.
Postmortem photography dates back to the late 19th century, when the magical new science of photography captured the memory of the deceased. Some relatives believed that a "mourning portrait" made shortly after death would enable the soul to keep on trekking. Family members might be photographed with the corpse, or near a collection of his or her possessions. Like sad trading cards, the resulting photographs were distributed to those who cared.
Preserving a family member in this way long had been common in Europe, and that's where my photos were headed, to the Polish towns and villages where my family and our Western New England community had roots.
My godmother's husband was my first subject. I felt the pressure as I climbed onto the chair the funeral director brought to the foot of Roman's coffin after everyone had left. My recent, first experience photographing a wedding had been cursed, yielding not a single print. But I still could have reassembled the wedding couple a few weeks later for another try.
With a dead person, it literally was now or never. Normally afraid of heights, I feared falling head-first into an occupied casket. My hands trembled as I attempted to focus, and the low lights of the room made necessary a painfully long exposure. I did pray that I could hold still for a sixtieth of a second. I did not prompt the subject to smile.
Even so, Roman came out looking great, cropped just above his pillow and just below hands folded and woven with a rosary. He and the funeral home prayer card bearing his name and date of death were slipped into onion-skin air mail envelopes bound for a town on the border of Czechoslovakia. Months later came a reply from the recipients, their squiggly script translating into gratitude for one last picture.
I was asked to shoot the next time our circle mourned, this subject an old cousin several times removed, but not yet physically removed from the family with whom he'd lived. So many of them lined up that I could barely include Stanley's face. The living smiled easily, happy for having had their Stanley and his luckily long existence.
Prints of Stanley and his gang were sent off to Poland, as were everyone I focused on wakes three or four times a year. All were old " though who wouldn't be to a teen? " and I was thankful to never have to photograph a child. But whomever my subject, both the photos and I did our duty.
The woman at the local Fotomat drive-through got used to the content of my orders.
"Nice tie," she'd say encouragingly of the latest shots.
My last subject was a great aunt who'd been a nun for 70 years at the time of her death. Following a wake at her home convent in Buffalo, her casket was shipped to our village for another. It arrived like a kit, her white casket containing not only sister, but also flowers and a large cross.
That night, I brought my camera without being asked. When calling hours were over, I knelt to pray, then reached for a chair. Sister was snapped. Later that week, she was mailed.
I haven't photographed a dead person for the 20 years since. Most family members who'd be known in Poland have already passed on. If a shot is desired, cameras are on every keychain, and the web means immediate mailing to cousins in Krakow.
I don't know where a single one of those photos is today, but I knew where they started out, in the viewfinder of a young photographer who for a short time practiced a dying art but helped remember some lives.
Like the daughter, she was dressed for an evening out. Elegant dark dress with buttons the size of silver dollars. But nothing about the pair's expressions anticipated a happy occasion. It was anything but, I learned as I pulled the rest of the photograph free and saw the man in his casket.Suddenly, all the elements connected to make sense, like the squares of the Concentration board at the end of the game show so popular at the time. Now I noticed the floral sprays behind mother and daughter, the ruched satin of the inner lid against which rested a heart-shaped arrangement. And, below that, the father in suit and tie and even eyeglasses, looking like someone who'd just stepped from his desk for a nap. But who, instead, was lying in a casket, his family next to him, posing for a picture.
I was astonished: my grandmother had a photo of some dead guy. I wondered who would want such a thing? And who would take such a thing?
In a couple of years, I would answer those questions: 1: Lots of people. 2: Me.
During my teens, I photographed the dead. I preferred the usual relatives, dog, boyfriend, but I focused on less lively subjects each time a relative or close family friend died. Along with rosary beads and tissues, I brought Canon and flash to the wake.
Relatives in the old country were awaiting a last look at the beloved and, without a photograph in those pre-email/video/webcam early '70s, how else could they see him or her? My parents volunteered me for the job, creating both an unusual skill for my resume and an opportunity to continue a custom.
Postmortem photography dates back to the late 19th century, when the magical new science of photography captured the memory of the deceased. Some relatives believed that a "mourning portrait" made shortly after death would enable the soul to keep on trekking. Family members might be photographed with the corpse, or near a collection of his or her possessions. Like sad trading cards, the resulting photographs were distributed to those who cared.
Preserving a family member in this way long had been common in Europe, and that's where my photos were headed, to the Polish towns and villages where my family and our Western New England community had roots.
My godmother's husband was my first subject. I felt the pressure as I climbed onto the chair the funeral director brought to the foot of Roman's coffin after everyone had left. My recent, first experience photographing a wedding had been cursed, yielding not a single print. But I still could have reassembled the wedding couple a few weeks later for another try.
With a dead person, it literally was now or never. Normally afraid of heights, I feared falling head-first into an occupied casket. My hands trembled as I attempted to focus, and the low lights of the room made necessary a painfully long exposure. I did pray that I could hold still for a sixtieth of a second. I did not prompt the subject to smile.
Even so, Roman came out looking great, cropped just above his pillow and just below hands folded and woven with a rosary. He and the funeral home prayer card bearing his name and date of death were slipped into onion-skin air mail envelopes bound for a town on the border of Czechoslovakia. Months later came a reply from the recipients, their squiggly script translating into gratitude for one last picture.
I was asked to shoot the next time our circle mourned, this subject an old cousin several times removed, but not yet physically removed from the family with whom he'd lived. So many of them lined up that I could barely include Stanley's face. The living smiled easily, happy for having had their Stanley and his luckily long existence.
Prints of Stanley and his gang were sent off to Poland, as were everyone I focused on wakes three or four times a year. All were old " though who wouldn't be to a teen? " and I was thankful to never have to photograph a child. But whomever my subject, both the photos and I did our duty.
The woman at the local Fotomat drive-through got used to the content of my orders.
"Nice tie," she'd say encouragingly of the latest shots.
My last subject was a great aunt who'd been a nun for 70 years at the time of her death. Following a wake at her home convent in Buffalo, her casket was shipped to our village for another. It arrived like a kit, her white casket containing not only sister, but also flowers and a large cross. That night, I brought my camera without being asked. When calling hours were over, I knelt to pray, then reached for a chair. Sister was snapped. Later that week, she was mailed.
I haven't photographed a dead person for the 20 years since. Most family members who'd be known in Poland have already passed on. If a shot is desired, cameras are on every keychain, and the web means immediate mailing to cousins in Krakow.
I don't know where a single one of those photos is today, but I knew where they started out, in the viewfinder of a young photographer who for a short time practiced a dying art but helped remember some lives.
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COMMENTS (1)
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Jessie Bennett wrote on June 16, 2009 7:08am
This is lovely, Suzanne. You reminded me of the camera I inherited from my grandfather, just after my grandmother died and he went into a nursing home in the late stages of Parkinson's. There was already a roll of film loaded, half used, and since it had been some time since he'd been able to use it, I knew that it must have been there a while. I finished off the roll and had it developed. The pictures I found were from the funeral of my grandmother's sister, Aunt Annie. It was a time so steeped in death and illness in our family, and Aunt Annie looked so much like my grandmother. Seeing the photos took my breath away. [Report Comment]
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