Speaker 1: Heads up, y'all. Today's episode is about death. So if
Speaker 1: that's not something you're interested in listening to right now,
Speaker 1: just come back to this episode later on.
Speaker 2: Theme is a.
Speaker 1: Production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: rapper Markel Moreau, also known by his stage name Gunu,
Speaker 1: was killed in Maryland. He was just twenty four years
Speaker 1: old when he died, and his death was all over
Speaker 1: the news, not just because he was a rapper who
Speaker 1: was murdered, but because of what his family did with
Speaker 1: his body after he died. Markel Morrow's loved Ones hosted
Speaker 1: a viewing over the weekend at DC Nightclop and.
Speaker 3: Now videos and pictures they're surfacing all over social media
Speaker 3: of Marrow's body being prominently displayed and then it.
Speaker 1: So much about this whole debacle was shitty. The fact
Speaker 1: that Guna was killed, the fact that his family had
Speaker 1: to grieve his death while subjected to intense public scrutiny,
Speaker 1: the fact that all the Internet instigators were more concerned
Speaker 1: with his deceased body being staged than his life being
Speaker 1: so needlessly taken from him. It was yet another instance
Speaker 1: of the circumstances around a young black man's death being
Speaker 1: harshly and endlessly picked apart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember this. There are people commenting online that
Speaker 3: presenting Markel's body that way at a club was too much.
Speaker 1: Now, I know that when you're putting a loved one
Speaker 1: to rest, there are often people in your ear trying
Speaker 1: to tell you how to do that best. But to
Speaker 1: have people who aren't in your family, don't live in
Speaker 1: your estate, were nowhere in around or near the deceased
Speaker 1: person's life, don't know you from Jack's squat, trying to
Speaker 1: tell you what you should and shouldn't have done, that
Speaker 1: seems tiring. It's clearly one not anyone's business, and two
Speaker 1: what the family wanted. This is Markel's mother, Patrese Parker Moreau,
Speaker 1: speaking to Fox five Washington DC.
Speaker 4: It's something that I wanted to do. That's how I want.
Speaker 4: Marchel wanted me to do it. That's how he wanted
Speaker 4: to go out. He wanted to celebrate his life, turning
Speaker 4: up having a party. He don't want people to be
Speaker 4: sad and crying. He always wants people to be happy,
Speaker 4: having fun.
Speaker 3: I'm sure the family would have much rather not had
Speaker 3: a memorial service at all and instead saw Markel get older,
Speaker 3: make more music. I'm sure they didn't want to have
Speaker 3: to grieve, right.
Speaker 1: Who would want to go through this? But as much
Speaker 1: as Americans like to be uptight about death and mourning,
Speaker 1: post mortem photography has a deep history that began long
Speaker 1: before the first negative Nancy logged onto a social media site.
Speaker 1: Death portraiture is an art that's been around for a
Speaker 1: long time, and it's still alive today. I'm Katie and
Speaker 1: I'm Eves. Today's episode the Last Image, Katie. Had you
Speaker 1: ever seen any funerary portraits before?
Speaker 3: You know what? Not professional ones. But whenever me and
Speaker 3: my grandmother were at a funeral, she would try to
Speaker 3: make me take a picture of the person in the casket,
Speaker 3: and I would always yell at her as they no.
Speaker 3: She would always take pictures and you would be like
Speaker 3: at her house looking through photo albums and then boom,
Speaker 3: somebody casket and I'm like, girl, but maybe.
Speaker 2: She was on some yeah.
Speaker 1: Twenty first century American culture on the whole is one
Speaker 1: that seems to not want to touch death with a
Speaker 1: ten foot stick. There are exceptions, of course, but here
Speaker 1: in the US, funerals are sad occasions and morning is
Speaker 1: private and appropriate it's not socially acceptable to wear our
Speaker 1: grief on our sleeves for too long, and there are
Speaker 1: respectable and unrespectable ways to mourn our loved ones. But
Speaker 1: you know, before all the anti aging creams and supplements,
Speaker 1: death was everywhere you turned, high infant mortality rates, war disease.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying we aren't still surrounded by death.
Speaker 1: It's just easier to live longer today in the US
Speaker 1: than it was in the mid eighteen hundreds, So death
Speaker 1: wasn't as touchy of a subject, and portraits of the
Speaker 1: dead were not uncommon.
Speaker 3: You mean images of people after they had already died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when photography was still a young art form, a
Speaker 1: lot of people never got the chance to have their
Speaker 1: picture taken when they were alive, so their opportunity to
Speaker 1: be photographed came in death. This gave the surviving family
Speaker 1: members and friends a super special memento to hold on to,
Speaker 1: a cherished reminder of their life.
Speaker 3: Wow, we can take photos to our hearts content these days,
Speaker 3: and those are our treasure to have when people pass away.
Speaker 3: So I can only imagine what it was like to
Speaker 3: have this new medium that can capture the image of
Speaker 3: a loved one exactly as they were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and back in the nineteenth century, photos of the
Speaker 1: day were put in family albums or displayed in the home.
Speaker 1: By the twentieth century, photography was more accessible, death care
Speaker 1: was more commercial, and post mortem photos weren't just for
Speaker 1: anyone's eyes. But people still took photos of and with
Speaker 1: dead people to honor their memory. It was less likely
Speaker 1: that these photos would be taken in a home setting,
Speaker 1: but photographers captured the deceased in their caskets alone or
Speaker 1: surrounded by loved ones. And one such photographer was James Vanderz.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I know, James.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You might have seen some of vander Z's photos before.
Speaker 1: He created some really beautiful studio portraits of black New
Speaker 1: Yorkers in the early nineteen hundreds. He also captured photographs
Speaker 1: that documented black life in Harlem at the.
Speaker 3: Time, and that time was the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1: He started his photography business in the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: in Harlem, but he really began to get attention after
Speaker 1: he was featured in the nineteen sixty nine exhibition Harlem
Speaker 1: On My Mind. He took portraits of noted artists like
Speaker 1: County Cullen and Ruby d He photographed Marcus Garvey and
Speaker 1: the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Speaker 3: Seems like his subjects had a little coin or notoriety.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: While post mortem portraits were restricted to the upper class
Speaker 1: back when they had to be painted, the emergence of
Speaker 1: photography made them a lot more accessible. The development of
Speaker 1: the technology was a boon to post mortem portraiture, and
Speaker 1: people with money, not just money money, could now get portraits.
Speaker 1: Some of those folks were the black folks that vander
Speaker 1: z photographed in New York.
Speaker 2: A lot of the.
Speaker 1: Families that commissioned him would have been considered middle class
Speaker 1: and weren't famous. And his work wasn't just about black life,
Speaker 1: it was also about black death. Along with artists and
Speaker 1: archivist Kamille Billips and poet Owen Dotson, James Vandersey created
Speaker 1: the Harlem Book of the Dead. In it, his funerary
Speaker 1: portraits were accompanied by Dotson's poems written from the dead's perspective,
Speaker 1: and tech from interviews with Billips. A lot of the
Speaker 1: older post mortem photographs we see are of Europeans and
Speaker 1: white Americans, but this art form and mourning ritual is
Speaker 1: also part of a black tradition when we get back
Speaker 1: how The Harlem Book of the Dead memorialized James Vandersey's
Speaker 1: work as a funerary photographer with a co sign from
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison. The Harlem Book of the Dead marked the
Speaker 1: first time the public saw all of James Vandersey's funerary
Speaker 1: portraits compiled, but it wasn't published until nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: decades after he captured the photos, and millennia after its namesake,
Speaker 1: the Egyptian Book of the Dead was used. The book
Speaker 1: is divided into thematic sections, for instance, one about children,
Speaker 1: one about soldiers, and one about women. The deceased pictured
Speaker 1: in the photos are children and adults. Sometimes vanderz has
Speaker 1: them whole props like a teddy bear or newspaper or flowers.
Speaker 1: Stories of how some of the people pictured died are
Speaker 1: included in the back of the book, And of course
Speaker 1: there are the poems that accompany the black and white
Speaker 1: photos in the book. Owen Dotson, a Black writer from Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: used his poetry to highlight the inevitability and grim reality
Speaker 1: of death, as well as the dignity and significance of
Speaker 1: the lives that were lost. He says in one poem,
Speaker 1: death always happens to somebody else, not the dead. Somebody friends,
Speaker 1: somebody aunts, cousins, nephews, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, not the dead.
Speaker 1: As Kamil Billips notes in the introduction to the book,
Speaker 1: poetry and portraiture were old bedfellows with death, and vanderz
Speaker 1: was well aware of the old tradition that he was
Speaker 1: a part of. When Billips asked him if he knew
Speaker 1: about the history of post mortem photography, he talked about
Speaker 1: people who painted portraits of the dead and about funerary
Speaker 1: photos he got from the West Indies that he copied
Speaker 1: and translated to his style.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by his style.
Speaker 1: Well, there were other artists, including black Ones, who photographed
Speaker 1: it dead, but Vanderzy's images were unique. The staging of
Speaker 1: the bodies and the composition of the photos weren't too
Speaker 1: different from other funerary photos. The deceased were pictures lying
Speaker 1: in plush caskets, surrounded by flowers, sometimes stage to look
Speaker 1: like they were sleeping, but Vandersy added a little extra
Speaker 1: flavor onto his photos by manipulating them to include images
Speaker 1: of angels of the deceased while they were living, of
Speaker 1: scriptures and palms and other inserts that, according to Vandersey,
Speaker 1: take away the gruesomeness of the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I noticed that looking at his photos, and I
Speaker 3: can see his influence on like obituaries. Maybe not the
Speaker 3: most modern obituaries now, but I feel like in the
Speaker 3: early two thousands, even the nineties, there was always like
Speaker 3: an angel and some flowers going on, and that's what
Speaker 3: he was putting in his photos, or you know, the
Speaker 3: picture of them while they're alive over them, which you know,
Speaker 3: looking at it then, like the technology was a little different,
Speaker 3: so it looks a little you know, cut out with
Speaker 3: scissors and pasted.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 3: But you can definitely see his influence in more modern context.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure like all these people probably have no
Speaker 3: idea who this man is, but it's interesting to see
Speaker 3: that through line there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but one I will say, girl, obituary art has
Speaker 1: not changed much since the early two thousands. Really, it
Speaker 1: has truly not evolve that much. So it still is
Speaker 1: kind of in that vein. But you know, Venderzy did
Speaker 1: have to be skilled to do those photo manipulations, like
Speaker 1: not everybody was doing that, and that is something that
Speaker 1: set him apart. So not only was it that the
Speaker 1: execution need to be on point for what it was
Speaker 1: at the time, which the technology was definitely not as
Speaker 1: advanced as it is today. But he had to have
Speaker 1: a little creativity and originality to think to even do
Speaker 1: these things. But I think part of that came from
Speaker 1: his artistry and came from his own spirit of like
Speaker 1: how he felt people should be portrayed in the kind
Speaker 1: of like light that should be brought to these photos,
Speaker 1: and the additional context that he wanted to act. And
Speaker 1: I think it also shows the way that he used
Speaker 1: the inserts. It shows this very black tradition of funerals
Speaker 1: and dying not just being about sadness and mourning, but
Speaker 1: also being about the faith, you know, where the angels
Speaker 1: and the scripture came into it, about moving on from struggle,
Speaker 1: you know, going back home, it being a homegoing and
Speaker 1: that was really impued in his portraits by these inserts
Speaker 1: that he used. Another thing I was thinking of, you know,
Speaker 1: you said that you could see the influence of him.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about those old Oln Mills photos. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember them, but they were black
Speaker 1: in the background and they had like a portrait of
Speaker 1: the family in the front. Probably facing one side, like
Speaker 1: maybe half profile, quarter turned or whatever you call that
Speaker 1: set up, and then a large floating head in the background.
Speaker 1: And if people haven't seen these photos, because the Harlem
Speaker 1: Book of the Dead is kind of hard to get
Speaker 1: hold of. Yeah, but so if people haven't seen these photos,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of imagine that floating head and think
Speaker 1: about that being angels instead in the background are like
Speaker 1: pictures of soldiers in formation that he took from like
Speaker 1: more documentary photography and scriptures. Those are the kind of
Speaker 1: things and the kind of setup he had of what
Speaker 1: he was doing for his portraiture. True artists, and though
Speaker 1: Vanderzy had his own particular style of post mortum portraiture
Speaker 1: that departed from the standard in many ways, it was
Speaker 1: imbued with all the symbology of its roots and meaning.
Speaker 1: The religious iconography, the church and funeral home settings, the
Speaker 1: emotion and drama in the poetry, the veneration of ancestors,
Speaker 1: the delicate treatment of loved one's bodies, the belief in
Speaker 1: an afterlife. They all harken back to well worn black
Speaker 1: rituals of mourning, perspectives on death, reckoning with grief and
Speaker 1: community care. Vanderzy was already ninety one at the time
Speaker 1: of this interview. But if it weren't for Billip's efforts
Speaker 1: and putting the project together, we would have never got
Speaker 1: the interview at all, let alone a book documenting Vanderzy's
Speaker 1: funerary photography. Considering how prolific he was and how long
Speaker 1: he worked, his death portraiture was but a footnote in
Speaker 1: many people's survey of his body of work. Tony Morrison,
Speaker 1: though knew what was up. The Harlem Book as a
Speaker 1: Dead inspired her novels Jazz and Beloved. She says in
Speaker 1: the forward to The Harlem Book of the Dead, the
Speaker 1: narrative quality, the intimacy, the humanity of his photographs are stunning.
Speaker 1: And the proof, if any is needed, is in this
Speaker 1: collection of photographs devoted exclusively to the dead, about which
Speaker 1: one can only say, how living are his portraits of
Speaker 1: the dead.
Speaker 3: I really liked her forward.
Speaker 2: I was like, you tell me why.
Speaker 3: It was just so good, Okay, But I did write
Speaker 3: down part of what she said, so she was talking.
Speaker 3: She started off the forward talking about how people are
Speaker 3: like back in the day that was real portraits, which
Speaker 3: I thought was so funny because I feel like we
Speaker 3: would say that about that period of time. Everybody says
Speaker 3: like back in the day, it was better, no matter
Speaker 3: when the day was. So she's like talking about that sentiment,
Speaker 3: like things are better back then, So she says, quote
Speaker 3: part of the enthusiasm is not critical evaluation, but simple nostalgia,
Speaker 3: a love affair with the past made more loving because
Speaker 3: the beloved is no longer with us and able to
Speaker 3: assert itself. And I just felt that was so true
Speaker 3: because like when people talk about things that are gone,
Speaker 3: whether they're like ideas or people, they're kind of like
Speaker 3: frozen things. The person or the thing can't talk back,
Speaker 3: It can't refute what you're saying about them, really, and
Speaker 3: it made me think about just like pictures of the
Speaker 3: dead generally, like you can do all this manipulation and
Speaker 3: make them into an angel and have them, you know,
Speaker 3: surrounded by flowers and put a newspaper in their hand
Speaker 3: or try to fix their face so they're smiling, and
Speaker 3: you can make them what you want them to be,
Speaker 3: kind of like Markel's parents and family members, like putting
Speaker 3: him in the club and like having his last hu rods,
Speaker 3: Like you get to to manipulate your loved one for
Speaker 3: the last time and then have like documentation of how
Speaker 3: you wanted them to be presented. So that's what her
Speaker 3: ford made me think of. So I feel like she was,
Speaker 3: you know, working on multiple levels just about photography in general,
Speaker 3: but specifically the subject of this photography.
Speaker 1: And it's often not only just frozen in time, but
Speaker 1: frozen in positive time because you know, so often people
Speaker 1: like don't disrespect the name of the dead, like we
Speaker 1: only want to talk about the good things about them.
Speaker 1: So on top of the nostalgia, there's this like positivity
Speaker 1: regurgitation that happens all over whatever their legacy was, which
Speaker 1: is obviously very complex for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: That shall.
Speaker 1: When we get back from the break defending death rituals
Speaker 1: in the social media.
Speaker 5: Era, So do people still take postportum photographs?
Speaker 1: Of course, professional photography, yes, but also plenty of people
Speaker 1: who have a smartphone and can get a shot of
Speaker 1: their deceased love one. Back in the day, the reach
Speaker 1: was limited to how many people could see your photo
Speaker 1: album or could get a physical print of the photo.
Speaker 1: But now people are posting images and videos of the
Speaker 1: dead on social media, namely Facebook, for hundreds thousands, potentially
Speaker 1: millions to see. Just google this topic and you'll see
Speaker 1: how controversial it is. People posting think pieces demanding others
Speaker 1: stop sharing pictures of the dead on social media, people
Speaker 1: asking folks on Kora if it's okay to post them,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people are not okay with seeing
Speaker 1: a picture of a deceased friend, family member, or even
Speaker 1: stranger when they open up their social media app.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen this happen before, like people getting really
Speaker 3: upset when someone posts an open casket of somebody. People
Speaker 3: who don't like it seem to consider it offensive and
Speaker 3: a violation of privacy, which I can see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fair, but some people take comfort in having
Speaker 1: and sharing photos of deceased loved ones. It's how they
Speaker 1: want to grieve. But that desire to mourn in the
Speaker 1: way that feels right to them bumps up against others' judgment,
Speaker 1: notions of appropriateness, morality, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And it can be hard to navigate managing ethics, feelings, opinions,
Speaker 3: and grief when the Internet is involved. We're in time
Speaker 3: when photos and videos of black people dying are spread
Speaker 3: endlessly and analyzed to death.
Speaker 1: Definitely, And to be honest, I did think the open
Speaker 1: casket photos were kind of strange in the past, but
Speaker 1: I've had to check my own bias for sure, because
Speaker 1: it's really not a new practice, it's just set in
Speaker 1: a different context. These images of the day can still
Speaker 1: be portraits that tell stories of the living of our ancestors,
Speaker 1: even if the framing is a little off or the
Speaker 1: lighting is bad. I appreciate being able to see it
Speaker 1: as the preserving of a morning practice that feels celebratory
Speaker 1: and hopeful, like we don't want to release the loved
Speaker 1: one's memory just because they transitioned.
Speaker 2: We want to keep it alive.
Speaker 1: Also, I'm thinking about how black folks are so good
Speaker 1: at bringing humor and levity into dark circumstances. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that shock wave of news that went around many
Speaker 1: years ago about all the corpses that were being dressed
Speaker 1: up and posed like they were alive thanks to extreme embalming.
Speaker 3: No, I've never heard of this in my life, girl.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a whole thing. It was a moment,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: It was a moment that didn't last too long, as
Speaker 1: many things in the news cycle don't. But it was
Speaker 1: people dressing their deceased loved ones up, putting them in
Speaker 1: different scenes, basically like doing whole set design, being able
Speaker 1: to prop them up in different ways. They would work
Speaker 1: with the funeral home, I guess, to be able to
Speaker 1: embalm them and place them in the way that felt right, Okaya.
Speaker 3: I wonder if they were like we are on the
Speaker 3: vanguard of a new way of displaying the dead.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, but now that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about it, I'm wondering, like if back in the day
Speaker 1: when people were staging their death portraits, they could only
Speaker 1: pose the bodies in certain ways because they were dead,
Speaker 1: so their bodies didn't move the same, so they had
Speaker 1: to be sitting up in certain ways, or sometimes they
Speaker 1: could stage them as lying down, as we talked about
Speaker 1: in some of Anderzy's.
Speaker 2: Work that he did.
Speaker 1: That was an old known way of staging dead portraits.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering now if back then people would have
Speaker 1: seen this and be like, wow, I wish we had
Speaker 1: this kind of evolving and this kind of technology, because
Speaker 1: they could have staged the portraits differently. They could have
Speaker 1: had a little bit more pizazz and razzle dazzle in
Speaker 1: their portraits back then, versus the more standard poses they
Speaker 1: had to have.
Speaker 3: Awesome I thinking, if you do someone in like a
Speaker 3: pose that's like real extra, then how do you get
Speaker 3: them in the casket after?
Speaker 2: I don't know, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's no casket at all, because that's how they
Speaker 1: were staged for the funerals, so that was the memorial service,
Speaker 1: so people would come to see the body in that way.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know if they were put in
Speaker 1: the caskets afterwards that people saw. I'm sure it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be hard for the people who are handling the body
Speaker 1: to put it in whatever casket they need to put
Speaker 1: it in for burial or for cremation, because they know
Speaker 1: how to work with bodies, and don't nobody need to
Speaker 1: see it after that point? True, Yeah, it is a lot,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm not saying it's not a lot. But
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, But I associated this phenomenon
Speaker 1: with black people, and I don't actually know if more
Speaker 1: Black folks did it than any other race, but I
Speaker 1: can say that many black folks did partake in the trend.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: A woman named Miriam Marie Burkebank was embalmed in posed,
Speaker 1: sitting up, wearing shades and grasping the stem of a wineglass.
Speaker 3: Okay, now that you say that, I feel like I
Speaker 3: have seen that picture. Did she have like long hair?
Speaker 3: Uh huh?
Speaker 2: I think she did have long hair.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like she had on jeans or something.
Speaker 1: I don't remember seeing the bottom of her because she
Speaker 1: was sitting at a table.
Speaker 3: In my mind, she's sitting with the wine glass and
Speaker 3: she has her leg propped up. That's what I'm seeing.
Speaker 1: Maybe she also had other alcohol around her around her
Speaker 1: and there was an ash tray with like a pack
Speaker 1: of cigarettes next to it because she loved a party.
Speaker 3: Okay, I feel like I've seen this. Now that you
Speaker 3: now that you describe the su try to.
Speaker 2: Block it out right. I'm not gouldn't be mad at that.
Speaker 1: And after eighteen year old Matthews was shot and killed,
Speaker 1: his family had him propped up in a chair playing Xbox,
Speaker 1: sitting next to some Doritos and soda. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so serious, but it's so unserious. A properly dramatic send
Speaker 1: off that feels like an extension of the playfulness, joy
Speaker 1: and spectacle that black folks bring to all our morning rituals.
Speaker 3: Those Airbrush memorial t shirts come to mind.
Speaker 1: Oh classic, but I know we're joking right now, but
Speaker 1: there is a more somber and serious side to death portraiture.
Speaker 1: I think that can really come to mind because you know,
Speaker 1: we see so many death portraits that we don't choose
Speaker 1: to see on a very regular basis, because when people
Speaker 1: are shot in the United States and killed in the
Speaker 1: States sanctioned killings than images of debt people can float
Speaker 1: around on the Internet and we are non consensually exposed
Speaker 1: to them in so many ways and consensually in so
Speaker 1: many ways, and you watch.
Speaker 2: Them over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: But there is an instance that we all know, or
Speaker 1: a lot of us know here in the United States,
Speaker 1: where there was a death portrait that was share it
Speaker 1: with everyone, and that was a consensual choice, and that
Speaker 1: was Emmett Till's photograph of when he was in his casket.
Speaker 3: I'm also thinking about how impactful it was for his
Speaker 3: mother made me tell Bradley to share photos of his
Speaker 3: body in his casket. She said, let the world see
Speaker 3: what I've seen. She wanted folks to face reality, to
Speaker 3: be as lit up as she was by the gruesome
Speaker 3: image of her son's body. She was in mourning, but
Speaker 3: she asked Jet photographer David Jackson to take photos of
Speaker 3: the funeral. She chose to share it in publications because
Speaker 3: she knew that photo can transmit grief into memorial empathy
Speaker 3: and ultimately a movement. Emmett till his death. Portraiture is
Speaker 3: definitely like a different vibe for sure, but it still
Speaker 3: is storytelling and it really did launch the civil rights movement,
Speaker 3: and it's interesting how death portraiture plays into it. And
Speaker 3: like you said, there's so many images of black people
Speaker 3: dying in a way that is not of our choosing
Speaker 3: the portraits itself, Like obviously the way Immettel died was
Speaker 3: not of his choosing, but even the portraits of black
Speaker 3: people dying, I'm thinking, like of Mike Brown and how
Speaker 3: they left him in the street like that, and you know,
Speaker 3: people took pictures and then posted that and it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, no one in his family chose for it
Speaker 3: to be that way, to be shown that way, but
Speaker 3: imtt Tell's mom Maymi did choose that, And like all
Speaker 3: these other people are like choosing how they're like shown
Speaker 3: in death. There's a dignity to it, whether you like
Speaker 3: want to see the picture or not. I think that
Speaker 3: the choice of it makes it like different.
Speaker 1: I agree, Yeah, the agency that made me tell Bradley
Speaker 1: had in it makes a really big difference. And that
Speaker 1: made her a storyteller too, because those were creative decisions
Speaker 1: that she made. But I think it was really impactful
Speaker 1: for her to do that and to understand, like so
Speaker 1: intrinsically seemingly what death portraiture could do, because as far
Speaker 1: as I know, nobody told her to do that. So
Speaker 1: it's like she already had this sense that she didn't
Speaker 1: have to derive from anywhere outside of herself that death
Speaker 1: portraiture meant something like the Art Forum meant something, because
Speaker 1: people knew about his death already, so they already had
Speaker 1: knowledge in writing and newspapers, and they already had knowledge
Speaker 1: from just hearsaying what people are saying to each other,
Speaker 1: news spreading that way. But she knew that the image
Speaker 1: captured in that way was going to have a different
Speaker 1: kind of impact. So it was an astute observation for
Speaker 1: her to say, no, let's do this, And it was
Speaker 1: also like a critical decision for the people who were
Speaker 1: at JET to publish the photos as well and to say,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do what.
Speaker 2: She wants us to do.
Speaker 1: So so it was a lot of coordination, you know,
Speaker 1: and structure around it that made it even more of
Speaker 1: a concerted storytelling effort on all of their parts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Jet they knew it would sell those too.
Speaker 3: They knew it was like a business decision, but not
Speaker 3: saying that business decisions can't coincide with movement decisions, because
Speaker 3: in that case it did.
Speaker 1: So Really, why police the ways that other folks choose
Speaker 1: to honor the dead like Markel Moreau's family. One thing
Speaker 1: that so many of the people who ordered extreme embalming
Speaker 1: said is that it's what their deceased loved one would
Speaker 1: have won it. So then the elaborate staging, the theatricality
Speaker 1: becomes a continuation of that person's story, their characteristics, their personality,
Speaker 1: the things they love to do, they're all on display.
Speaker 2: And Katie, I have to say that.
Speaker 1: Even though in the past I was really a little
Speaker 1: weirded out by people sharing the death portraits online, thinking
Speaker 1: about James Vandersey's work and learning more about death portraiture
Speaker 1: and the history of it, I've kind of shifted my
Speaker 1: feelings on it, Like I know, this is like me
Speaker 1: rewriting the narrative and away for myself and you know,
Speaker 1: doing a little bit of a revisionist history and my
Speaker 1: own history.
Speaker 2: But I'm not mad at it.
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm mad at it. Okay, I'm not mad
Speaker 3: at it. Okay, I'm mad at it being on the
Speaker 3: internet and me seeing it without my consent. But I think,
Speaker 3: like how I said, I would be like yelling at
Speaker 3: my grandma, like I don't want to take the picture.
Speaker 3: I mean I want to take the picture either, but
Speaker 3: like I do think it is important to have. But
Speaker 3: just like how everything is just like so accessible now,
Speaker 3: I truly do not need to see an open castt photo.
Speaker 3: I think, ever, that's fair.
Speaker 1: Everybody's comfort level is different, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: difficult thing about it. I think that I may be
Speaker 1: because you know, I was already into like maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit more than an average person, into death planning
Speaker 1: and death care, and think about it a lot for myself,
Speaker 1: talk about wills with family, you know, I think about
Speaker 1: the ways that I would want to be buried and
Speaker 1: what I want to happen and I die. I think
Speaker 1: I may be a person who confronts it a little
Speaker 1: bit more than the average person in the United States.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't have the stats on that, but
Speaker 1: I'm quite comfortable with it, and like recently when I've
Speaker 1: had to plan a funeral, myself like was able to
Speaker 1: handle it because I think of all of that work
Speaker 1: that I had already done. So I guess there was
Speaker 1: a part of me that had to question why the
Speaker 1: whys around it for me, like why was I so
Speaker 1: sensitive to this thing that we all have to deal with.
Speaker 1: I must have to deal with it for myself. And
Speaker 1: I do know that there's been a shifting of that
Speaker 1: culture around death in the United States over time, where
Speaker 1: we've been more afraid to deal with it that I
Speaker 1: don't think is a holy positive thing, the way that
Speaker 1: we create distance from it because you know, we live
Speaker 1: to die essentially because we know it's coming at the
Speaker 1: end of everything.
Speaker 2: So for me, it was just.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, I had to consider why was I against it?
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a thing of consent for me because
Speaker 1: for me, I know when I log on the internet,
Speaker 1: I'm about to get some stuff I don't want to see.
Speaker 1: I thought it was from a different place for me,
Speaker 1: So I think that's part of why my feelings have
Speaker 1: shifted on it. But that doesn't mean that I've lost
Speaker 1: the nuance that like that feeling can be different for everyone,
Speaker 1: and I don't necessarily prescribe that it's the right thing
Speaker 1: to do to share death portraiture on or I don't.
Speaker 2: Even know if I want to call it portrait because
Speaker 2: that sounds really official.
Speaker 1: But you know, open casket images on the internet, because
Speaker 1: that's an element that didn't exist in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: or the early nineteen hundreds that we have to reckon
Speaker 1: with now. It's just I appreciate now having a larger
Speaker 1: lay of the land and thinking about they did this before,
Speaker 1: and they were used to death and we still should be.
Speaker 1: Death isn't the same, not the same magnitudes in the
Speaker 1: same ways, but we talk about it every day and
Speaker 1: it's still a big part of black media. Black death
Speaker 1: is Yeah, I think it was a personal reckoning.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad that you got that from doing this
Speaker 3: research in this episode.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 3: It's the growth for me girl, all right. Now, Now
Speaker 3: it is time for roll credits, the segment where we
Speaker 3: give credit to a person place thank idea that we
Speaker 3: encountered during the week. Eves. You want to kick it.
Speaker 1: Off, sure, and I'll just say something inspired by the episode.
Speaker 1: I will say Camille Billips, because, as I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the episode, the Harlem Book of the Dead wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been possible without her. She's the one who organized it.
Speaker 1: She was like, Hey, I think it would be a
Speaker 1: good idea for you to put all of your death
Speaker 1: portraiture in one book. You know, he had all of this,
Speaker 1: these other photographs that we've seen, And she was like,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, you should work with Owen
Speaker 1: Dotson and y'all can get together and y'all can put
Speaker 1: poetry along with the photos. And this needs to be
Speaker 1: shared with everyone. And it just makes me think about
Speaker 1: all the projects that wouldn't have happened if people didn't
Speaker 1: just say I have this feeling and it feels right,
Speaker 1: let me just see if we can do it. And
Speaker 1: it's also inspirational for me to know that, like the
Speaker 1: long groll a parchment paper of ideas that I have
Speaker 1: and I'm like, isn't it good idy or not that
Speaker 1: like it could be so uh Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: give credit to Kameil Billips today her work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many things that just wouldn't exist if
Speaker 3: one person was like, Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and
Speaker 3: do it. You know, or like I'm gonna get the
Speaker 3: people together so we can do it. I would like
Speaker 3: to give credit to printed out pictures also kind of
Speaker 3: relate it to today's episode. But my nephew gave me
Speaker 3: printed out pictures of himself for Valentine's Day and he
Speaker 3: was posing and he was so cute, and I'm just like,
Speaker 3: remember when we used to give each other pictures, Like
Speaker 3: I have like so many pictures of you that you
Speaker 3: like printed out and like wrote notes on the back
Speaker 3: of me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like school.
Speaker 3: Pictures are just like pictures we take around, you know,
Speaker 3: and like we don't do that anymore. Like there's so many,
Speaker 3: Like we have so many pictures, but like they're not
Speaker 3: going to exist because the technology keeps changing and the
Speaker 3: files get corrupted and you try to print them out
Speaker 3: later and it's all blurry because it's on your iPhone too.
Speaker 3: So I love a printed photograph and I would like
Speaker 3: to give credit to that today. I love that. And
Speaker 3: with that, we will see y'all next week. Bye hy bye,
Speaker 3: bye bye bye.
Speaker 1: On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 1: It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison. Follow us
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Speaker 1: an email at hello at on Theme dot Show. Head
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