» Matt
Messages: 5789
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| Mar 17 Juin, 08 22:40, |
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Un travail très troublant...
Un photographe, Walter Schels (72 ans), et sa compagne Beate Lakotta (42 ans), ont rencontré des personnes gravement malades, et ont réalisé des portraits de ces personnes, avant et après leur mort.
Pour comprendre les motivations (personnelles, intellectuelles, du couple et des malades), lisez (en anglais, sorry) la transcription de la vidéo ci-après, ou regardez directement la vidéo sur le site de la galerie qui expose ce travail ICI, (interview réalisée dans la galerie).
Un article du Guardian.
En Français: ici et là
Transcription de la vidéo
Interview with Walter Schels (photographer)
and Beate Lakotta (journalist).
W: Well, we have different reasons why we have done this project, and my
partner Beate and I, we are since 12 years a couple and our age difference
is 30 years.
B: We had always been frightened by thinking that Walter would be the first,
statistically at least, who was going to die and we were wondering how it
would feel, how it would look like, how it would be and we hoped to learn
from people in a hospice who knew that they would die very soon. We had
the expectation to learn from them.
W: We certainly have different reasons also. I experienced a World War and at
the end of the War I was nine years old and the house we lived in was bombed,
and I saw many dead people, so I had the rest of my life very much fear about
that and so we also or I wanted to get rid of it.
We find connection with the hospice in Berlin and we were just trying, we got
there and asking if they allow us to do this and we found open doors.
B: We asked in the beginning, we would like to take a portrait now and we would
like to stay with you, we would like to visit you until to the end and we would
like to take a portrait when you are dead. For us it was really difficult to ask
this question, we had always been afraid to ask this, because you express
“I’m convinced that you will die,” and there is a strange phenomenon – we all
know that we are going to die, but we don’t really believe it will happen to us.
So death, it’s something which happens to other people and, astonishingly
enough, people in a hospice have the same feeling. Many of them, they all
know they are going to die, but many of them have hope until to the end.
And sometimes even the hope that a miracle would happen, they would have
been saved, but when you ask somebody “we would like to take a portrait
after your death,” you express “I don’t believe in a miracle, I believe you will
die very soon.” And this was a very difficult question.
From the first visit to the last visit, sometimes there had been some days,
some weeks or even months and we stayed with everybody for the whole
time. We visited everybody several times, sometimes every day, and so the
last portrait was a kind of saying goodbye for us. In the end we knew a lot
about everybody, it’s now for us a kind of a huge family.
W: Well they were as different as we are of course and they lived and they died
very differently. And the opinion to life, it was also very different.
B: Some people have been very brave, and we have been…It gave us a little hope
that maybe one day when we will be in the same situation, we will develop a
kind of strength. Sometimes somebody who had never been strong in his life
became very strong at the end and this was a very good experience, it was an
encouraging experience for us.
W: Some of them, they just were actually not willing to die and there are some
that just wanted to die, because there is no choice, so they said “if I have to
die, I want it as soon as possible, to get it done”. And some others, they just
pushed it away as good as they can.
B: Some of them couldn’t accept that their life was going to an end, because they
didn’t really live before; that’s what they expressed. They said, “oh, now it’s the
end, I just thought it was going to start, I just wanted to start living now. My whole
life was work and now I wanted to enjoy my retirement,” or “I wanted to enjoy
my partnership, my relationship with somebody, I wanted to spend more time
with my children.” And they were very surprised that death came so suddenly,
so unexpected, and they were very frustrated and sad.
In truth it’s a very modern taboo. In former times people had been used to
have contact with dying people and also to have their beloved ones at home
when they died. So everybody, even small children, had the experience of
how it looks like, how the last breath sounds, how somebody looks like when
he is dead, how it feels to touch somebody who is dead and we lost this
contact with death and dying, since death has been banned to hospitals.
B: I think if you just try to imagine how you would like to be treated when you are
dead, I wouldn’t like to be treated as just a corpse, a dead body – “just close
the coffin as soon as possible.” I would like that people I loved would look at
my last face.
We were really surprised about the huge interest and I think it shows something
very interesting that our wish to overcome our own fears concerning death and
dying, it’s maybe a wish many people share with us. Maybe the interest was
to see some spooky or shocking pictures, but when they saw the pictures and
read the stories I think most of them understood that it’s something else what
we did. We didn’t want to shock people, we didn’t want…Our intention was
not to break a taboo, yes, but really to share experiences.
W: Well, the first time when I developed the films and of course I had to make
many prints and I got a huge studio and the whole floor was covered with
these prints and I was scared if people come that they just don’t want to see
these pictures. And mostly I hid them and slowly we got used to and we also
got a response and this was actually better than we thought and people were
very open-minded.
B: Many people don’t have any opportunity to experience anything about death
or dying until somebody, a beloved one or even they themselves, are going to
die and then they feel helpless, they don’t know how to behave, what to say,
what to do and maybe this exhibition can help.
I think I have lost my fear of the dead and maybe with all the last portraits I have
lost my fear of being dead, because if you look at them, if you look at the last
faces, you don’t get the impression that it’s something awful or shocking to
be dead, it’s quite peaceful and it’s silent and just your existence has come
to an end and that’s all.
W: Well, I think the most important thing is be aware that the life has an end, to live
the daily life, don’t speculate for anything else but today, and it’s worthwhile
trying, but it’s not so easy.
[end of transcript] |
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~ a Picture, Ourselves ~ |
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