Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

“With a funeral you never know what's going to happen,” says Priscilla Etienne, who runs a company that takes professional photos at funerals. “Someone might jump up and leap on the coffin. Emotions are real, they're raw.”

Priscilla Etienne runs a London-based company called Funeography that takes professional photos at funerals. She has been featured on the BBC and in Popular Photography. Digital Dying spoke with Priscilla about her beef with funeral directors, why weddings are boring and the reason she's dying to photograph a gypsy funeral.

Most people aren't accustomed to funeral photos, how do you persuade potential clients that it is a good idea?

People spend so much money on getting the coffin, or getting the brass band, what's the point if you don't remember it? Why not have a record of everything? I was at a funeral of a 12 year old boy, they had a Welsh quartet then sung football club songs. It was marvelous, but no one was taking pictures. When my parents died in 1996 no one took pictures. We all missed it. My mom's death was expected, she had been sick for a year. But my dad died eight months later and it was unexpected. He was in the Caribbean. We weren't told about the funeral until literally two days before. That kind of thing happens quite a lot and is another reason why it's good to have the photos. The distance people sometimes have to go for funerals is tremendous. Not everyone can make it.

How do you go about photographing a funeral?

We wear black trousers and black T-shirts with the photographers name. We'll go to the home beforehand and ask about the person. If, for example, I learn that the dog will be getting their possessions, then I know to make sure and get two to three pictures of the dog. We take pictures at the home, at the church and of the family arriving and the coffin being carried in. Coming from the East End there are a lot of old gangster types and sometimes they'll ask about the camera, say something like, ‘Where's that going love?' We do a lot with zoom lenses. Inside the congregation everyone's eyes are at the front but they are in their own thoughts. I have one photo of a white woman amongst a group of about 400 black people and she is just looking up with this expression like, ‘I wonder what's for dinner?'

Other Great Reads: The curious history of post-mortem photography

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The freemasons are a secretive organization with obscure origins and mysterious symbols. Norman Miller is 93 years old and has performed more than 1,000 masonic funerals.

Norman Miller fought in World War II then Korea and has been leading Freemason funeral services ever since. He currently lives in El Paso, Texas. Digital Dying spoke with him over the phone about how he got started, what a Freemason funeral is like and after seeing so many deaths, how he keeps going. The freemasons are a secretive organization with obscure origins. Sometime during the 15th or 16th century the first chapel, or lodge, was begun in Scotland. There are now an estimated six million Masons around the world, and just under two million in the US. Geographic regions are divided into jurisdictions, which are administered by Grand Lodges. El Paso, where Norman lives, has 10 lodges. A list of famous Freemasons includes the Italian President Silvio Berlusconi (he was expelled from the order in 1981), Nat King Cole, King Edward the VIII, Benjamin Franklin, J. Edgar Hoover, Meriwether Lewis, Harry Houdini, Mozart's dad Leopold, Arnold Palmer, Paul Revere, World War II General Douglas MacArthur, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and numerous US presidents, including the most famous Mason, George Washington.

How did you start performing Mason funerals?

When I was still a young man a lady came up to me and we had a really nice conversation. She said, ‘Norman, you ought to go into the ministry.' I never did but I went to the Lutheran church and sang in the quire. I joined the Masons in 1958 and retired from the Army in 1963. I did my first Masonic funeral in March of 1964. The job was given to me by the former secretary of the lodge. He just handed me this paper about Mason funerals and told me that I would now be leading them. I said, ‘Isn't this supposed to be done by the master of the lodge?' and he said, ‘Learn it, you have to do it.' So I did. I have done over 1,000 funerals since then. I have another one this Thursday.

Has it been depressing to lead so many funerals?

It has been not a pleasure for me but an inspiration, because the people you come in contact with appreciate it so much. It doesn't bother me, I have a firm belief in the deity. I have no fear of death. When the Lord wants me he can take me. Both my parents have passed away, and I just had a brother who passed away, he was 94. I have had very close friends in the masonry that have passed away. I have realized that they must be taken, earth to earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. When you come into this world you are a free born person and when you pass away, if you live the right kind of life, you are also a free person.

Other Great Reads: Funeral customs around the world

What's a Mason funeral ceremony like?

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In 1821, the Romantic poet John Keats died of tuberculosis at the age of 26. A period of “tuberculosis chic” followed, says Professor Deborah Lutz.

Deborah Lutz has written about Gothic villains, Victorian sex rebels and the Cannibal Club; her latest book is on Victorian death culture. She is an assistant professor at Long Island University. Digital Dying spoke to her on hair jewelry, the glamorization of tuberculosis and just what it means to live in a world without relics.

Why were the Victorians so obsessed with death?

The Victorians died in homes and the body was kept around. People touched bodies, took hair from bodies, took photos of bodies. People were used to seeing bodies. But today people die in hospitals. We often don't see dead bodies, they go to the morgue and disappear. We want to think of ourselves as progressive people, interested in the sexual body, but we are disgusted by the dead body. The Victorians were okay with both.

What is a relic, and what does it have to do with sweat and blood?

Relics are often associated with the church, but the Victorian relics I talk about are secular relics. A firsthand secular relic could be hair, or someone's desiccated heart or a finger bone. Secondhand relics, or contact relics, could be clothing or letters or manuscripts. It could be something that was sweat on or bled on or cried on, like the Shroud of Turin. Their texture can carry someone's essence, a sweater would work because you wear it on your body and presumably you might sweat on it. Most religious relics are made of porous materials, something that takes in the essence, like wood. A wooden toy you have handled for all these years takes on the texture of being handled, the fact that you touched it over and over actually affects its surface.

Other Great Reads: Religious Funeral Customs from Around the World

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Werner Herzog's new documentary film about death row, "Into the Abyss", premiered Friday at the Toronto Film Festival. It discusses questions like, how does knowing when and how you're going to die affect an individual, and how does knowing that change time?

Imagine, you're rotting in jail with an execution date looming, what are you thinking? Werner Herzog's new documentary film, Into the Abyss, which premiered Friday at the Toronto Film Festival, tackles this question. Digital Dying recently spoke with Harry Schleiff, a New York City based video producer who worked on the film about the surprisingly poetic language of death row inmates, how time slows in the moments before death and just what it means to be a death row groupie.

Describe the film, is it a political statement on the death penalty?

The film follows the case of Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, two 19 year olds who basically stole a car and ended up killing three people over it, a totally mindless crime. Herzog interviewed Michael Perry something like ten days before he was to be executed. He tried as hard as he could to avoid making a film explicitly about the death penalty that made some sort of statement. It's more a look into the individual situations of these people, because when you start to look into these death penalty cases absurd details surface. Herzog is interested in questions like, how does knowing when and how you're going to die affect an individual? How does knowing that change time? We interviewed a number of other death row prisoners, footage which will appear in a TV series to be released at a later date.

OTHER GREAT READS: WORLD'S DUMBEST TV DEATHS

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by Justin Nobel

A crime scene on the hit TV show CSI. “Everyone has this idea that the police does the cleanup or the coroner does the cleanup or the funeral home does the cleanup,” says Aftermath co-founder Tim Reifsteck, “but actually, they don't.”

Where do the blood and guts go after a horrific suicide or grisly accidental death? Often it is scrubbed away by Aftermath Inc., a crime scene cleanup company that began in a Chicago basement in 1996 and now has offices in 45 states. Digital Dying spoke with co-founder and Vice President Tim Reifsteck about why CSI is not real, the most gruesome thing he has ever seen—it involved a man whose body got spread the length of a football field by a machine that processes plastics—and how he still sleeps at night.

Give us the sticky specifics of how the job works?

We cleanup after murders, suicides, unintended deaths, industrial accidents. Our technicians wear Tyvek suits, booties, respirators, and two or three layers of gloves; surgical gloves, high risk leather gloves and sometimes another leather glove on top of that if we're dealing with lots of glass. The respirator helps filter out the pregnant odor of a decomposition, because bodies liquefy and really produce an unpleasant odor. When we arrive on site we'll assess the cleanup and establish a controlled zone then we'll do a bio-removal, observing what part of the structure has to be removed, for example, do we penetrate the floor and go through the room below. We deal with personal property, what can be cleaned and what must be disposed of. Step three is a bio-wash, we remove stuff from walls, we disinfect and deodorize.

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AFTER A SUICIDE

Is it tough to see bloody deaths every day?

Just like the police and coroner and funeral directors, you get desensitized with seeing blood and bodily fluids, but one thing you never get over is the human interaction you have with the families. This is the worst time of their lives, and that is very hard for our supervisors and technicians to deal with. People looking to work for our company will say, ‘I can see blood, I've worked in slaughter houses, I've been a hunter my whole life.' When we have someone leave it is usually because they can't deal with another crying family. Everyone deals with death differently, in one situation a family member might be crying at the top of their lungs and asking a technician to bring their loved one back while in another there's a fist fight in the front yard over who gets to take home the TV.

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by Justin Nobel

The most famous case of zombification involves Clairvius Narcissus. “Despite the fact he was completely conscious he still truly thought he had died,” says Hamilton Morris. "When he was resurrected he truly thought he had been resurrected."

Hamilton Morris, a pioneering young pharmacologist, has hacked through the Amazon looking for ayahuasca and hunkered down in a missile silo with an LSD kingpin; one of his most recent adventures involved death. He traveled deep into the Haitian countryside in search of the elusive drugs capable of turning people into zombies. “The first thing to do when you want to know about zombies is put aside all preconceived notions,” says legendary anthropologist Wade Davis at the beginning of Morris' riveting film Nzambi. Digital Dying recently sat down with Morris at a lively Brooklyn café to discuss the undead.

Is the idea of death different in Haiti?

It is almost like a Philip K. Dick idea, to be dead and not know it, or be alive and actually be dead. It is unclear how often zombification happens, and it is unclear how it is perceived by the people who actually go through the ordeal. There have been scientifically verified cases. When Clairvius Narcissus was being poisoned and turned into a zombie, he was completely conscious. He was nailed into a coffin and buried alive, one nail pierced his cheek and it left a wound, which he was proud of showing to people later. Despite the fact he was completely conscious he still truly thought he had died. When he was resurrected he truly thought he had been resurrected.

How do American zombies differ from Haitian zombies?

There's a lot of confusion between the American interpretation of why a zombie is scary and the Haitian interpretation. Americans are afraid of being attacked by zombies and having them eat their brains or claw them to death, but Haitians are afraid of becoming zombies, not of zombies themselves. If you become a zombie you lose your life force, your ability to work. But almost the opposite is true in terms of slave beliefs, which is where the idea of a zombie originally comes from; zombie slaves were put to work. So it seems like a contradiction but there is definitely an evolution in the way the zombie behaves. For example, they say that zombies now use computers. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

George Campbell taught a class on death and dying for 20 years at New Paltz High School, in upstate New York. At one point the popular course had more than 85 students.

New Paltz High School teacher George Campbell taught chemistry, biology and for 20 years, a course on death and dying called “Death Education.” The class began in 1975 with just 17 kids but by the mid-1980s it typically had more than 70 students enrolled and was one of the most popular courses at the school. Police officers and morticians came in to speak and there were class trips to hospitals and the morgue. A textbook on teaching death that Campbell wrote is available online. Digital Dying recently spoke with him about his experience as what seems to be the country's first and only high school death ed teacher.

1. How did you convince the school to run a class on death?

I taught the class for a few weeks just as an experiment. Some kids from my oceanography class who knew me as a teacher joined and were really interested. Then I went to the principal, he was very liberal and encouraged me but said we had to get permission from the board of education. Just by coincidence a medical doctor and a funeral director I had come in and talk for that initial class were members of the board of education, so these people stood up for me and thought it was a great idea. There was only one member who objected, she thought it would be a difficult topic for the students. Interestingly enough she was the daughter of a minister. But the others overruled her. After that it went smoothly. Read the rest of this entry »