Memento Mori or Remembering the dead.

Funeral Pictures. Whenever I mention to people that I photograph funerals as one of my services, they respond with a grimace of uncertainty. I suppose people forget to acknowledge that a funeral is a dual event: a saying of goodbye to a loved one and the gathering of those who remain.  Sometimes, the reunion is just the prelude for another one's leaving, so it becomes a record of family unity and change. A third validation is to photograph the ritual and memorial. Sometimes a burial is accompanied by pomp and honors, as it was for our Border Patrol veteran.  In the old days, funeral photography included shots of the deceased, but now that is done only at the discretion of the family.  It was common and referred to as "memento mori", or remembering the dead. Finally, sometimes a family just wants images to share with others who could not attend but want to participate in their own way.

Funeral imagery is not created to be gruesome or to cause nightmares but but to document a reality of man's existence. One does not have to shy away from it.