Life Before Death by Walter Schels (February 28, 2010) 
(52 votes, average: 3.83 out of 5)
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Categories / Human Interest / Portraiture / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 3 Comments
Introduction by Sophia Greiff
At first, it is difficult to look at these pictures. They are touching and breathtaking, close and intimate. They show what most of us do not want to see. Walter Schels portrayed moribund people in a hospice, before and after they died. He approached a social taboo, while at the same time trying to overcome his own fear of death. The resulting black-and-white close-ups are captivating and hard to elude. One begins to examine the faces, to wonder how the mimic changes when the soul has left the body, when the pain has vanished and the muscles have relaxed. One tries to read the stories of their lives in the lines on their faces. Stories, hopes and fears that Walter Schels and journalist Beate Lakotta have listened to and documented in a very striking and regardful work about dying.
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Few experiences are likely to affect us as profoundly as an encounter with death. Yet most deaths occur almost covertly, kept away from our everyday lives. Death and dying are arguably our last taboos – the topics our society finds most difficult. We certainly fear them more than our ancestors did. Opportunities to learn more about them are rare indeed.
This work features people whose lives are coming to an end. It explores the experiences, hopes and fears of the terminally ill. All of them agreed to be photographed shortly before and immediately after death.
The majority of the subjects portrayed spent their last days in hospices. All those who come to such places realise that their lives are drawing to a close. They know there is not much time left to settle their personal affairs.
Yet hardly anyone here is devoid of hope: they hope for a few more days; they hope that a dignified death awaits them or that death will not be the end of everything.
Walter Schels (1936) lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.
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Posted in category 652
No words, No comments. Thank you Walter Schels….
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Intense… very much so…