Life before death
Photographer Walter Schels was terrified of death, so much so he refused to see his mother after she passed away. Upon entering his 70s, Schels finally decided to overcome his fear through a bold, bizarre project – photographing individuals before and directly after their death.
The black and white portraits serve as a confrontation with the the unknown, the proximity of the lens to subject unflinching and slightly macabre. Images are paired with accounts of the deceased right before their passing with each person dealing with the inevitable in their own way. Schels and his partner, Beat Lakotta, began approaching potential individuals at hospices in Berlin and Hamburg, surprisingly few people said no. The pair were on constant alert, at times running out in the middle of the night to shoot before the undertaker would come. Though emotionally draining, Schels recognized that the series became an important epitaph to individuals before they actually died. With family and friends unable to cope with the looming truth, terminally ill patients often feel completely isolated.
‘It’s so good you’re doing this’, Schels quoted a dying man to The Guardian, ‘No one else is listening to me, no one wants to hear or know what it’s really like.’
Schels is no longer terrified of death and now sees avoidance of the issue as a serious problem in contemporary society, people unable to be truly present for loved ones when they need them most. Life Before Death is an attempt to confront our worst fears and perhaps, to see those nearing the end in a more human light. When facing death, we all stop pretending.
‘Everything that’s not real is stripped away,’ he told The Guardian, ‘You’re the most real you’ll ever be, more than you’ve ever been before’.
Name: Wolfgang Kotzahn
Age: 57
Born: 19th January 1947
Died: 4th February 2004, at Leuchtfeuer Hospice, Hamburg
There are colorful tulips brightening up the night table. The nurse has prepared a tray with champagne glasses and a cake. It’s Wolfgang Kotzahn’s birthday today. “I’ll be 57 today. I never thought of myself growing old, but nor did I ever think I’d die when I was still so young. But death strikes at any age.”
Six months ago the reclusive accountant had been stunned by the diagnosis: bronchial carcinoma, inoperable. ‘It came as a real shock. I had never contemplated death at all, only life’, says Herr Kotzahn. ‘I’m surprised that I have come to terms with it fairly easily. Now I’m lying here waiting to die. But each day that I have I savor, experiencing life to the full. I never paid any attention to clouds before. Now I see everything from a totally different perspective: every cloud outside my window, every flower in the vase. Suddenly, everything matters’.
Photograph Citations
Walter Schels. 2004. Life Before Death, Hamburg.
Gallery of Life before death pictures: (http://www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath)
