Marco Lorenzetti — The Mortician's Grandson

Casket/Couch, Furman Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Preacher, S.B. Rawls Mortuary, Chicago Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
First Viewing, Ramsey Memorial Chapel, Detroit, Michigan
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Pete Smith, P.M. Smith & Sons, Oak Park, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Mr. Stokes in the Casket Showroom, Stokes-Marr Mortuary, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Matriarch, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Outside Room C with Jeff, Furman Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Candy at Columbian Funeral Home, Franklin Park, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Herbert C. Barker, Barker’s Mortuary, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Owner’s Daughter, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Owner, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Interior, Postlewait Co., Oak Park, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Les Papke’s Personal Favorite, Postlewait Co., Oak Park, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
In Front of the Moveable Fireplace, Postlewait Co., Oak Park, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Eulalio and the Tombstone Mistake, De Vriendt Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Eulalio and the Embalmer, De Vriendt Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Hoist and Valentine, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
My Grandfather’s Sink, Ramsey Memorial Chapel, Detroit, Michigan
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Mr. Ramsey in my Grandfather’s Embalming Room, Ramsey Memorial Chapel, Detroit, Michigan
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Make-Up, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Suture, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Grooming, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Driver, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Casket Carriage, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Buried with Honors, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Honor Guard, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Mourners, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Wreath Makers, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Scraping a Wreath Stand, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Cemetery Worker, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Sexton, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Sexton’s Son, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Burial Day, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Sealing the Vault, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Pallbearer’s Gloves, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Earth, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Untitled, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Untitled, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Gravedigger, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Daniel in the Crematorium, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Cremation Oven, Left, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Cremation Oven, Right, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Cremation, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Rick in the Columbarium, Bohemian National Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Sexton and his Son, Mausoleum, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Headstone, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
The Ground Crew, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Procession, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Father and Son, Burkhard Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.
Interior, Burkhard Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois
The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-
50, 8x10 Gelatin Silver Contact Prints
I’ve had my grandfather’s picture with me for a long time now. My mother gave it to me one day, thrusting it into my arms, then asking if it was something I would like to have. She told me her father had come to her in a dream the night before, and mentioned the portrait. What I saw was a head-and-shoulders photograph of someone I had never known. Made in the formal manner of the day at Henderson’s Studio in downtown Detroit, the image recorded a serious man with a hint of a kindly smile. It was one of the few things I had of Ed’s, that and his ivy-patterned cup—a giant ceramic thing that held a lake of coffee—saucer to match. The picture, the cup, and then something else: his licenses, yellowing in their sagging frames.
In 1929, the Michigan Department of Health granted Edward Joseph Sweeney a mortician’s license and embalmer’s license. When Ed died, my grandmother, Anne Marie Sweeney, then in her 40’s, returned to school for a mortuary science degree that would allow her to run the family business. It wasn’t long before she was elected the first woman president of the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association. Years later I wondered about the E.J. Sweeney funeral home and contacted the current owner with a request to photograph. He graciously invited me in, and we shot in the old embalming room. And so began a long and perhaps unique photographic quest into the funeral business that continued in Chicago while I studied for a Master’s Degree, and subsequently in the years beyond.
To most of us, the business of death is indeed in the shadows. Death touches us all. We attend funerals and visit the cemetery. Love, loss and the grief of parting are the most human of all emotions. But we never dwell on the business of death itself. We don’t talk about it. We hope we never need it. With all its Hollywood trappings of foggy graveyards and ghostly apparitions, it remains a mystery. I met many families in the funeral business, just as mine was in the forgotten past. Husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, perhaps drawn by temperament or a need to serve. News of my project spread, and they welcomed me in. It was as if they wanted to assure me there is no mystery. Theirs is a simple function: to escort the body on its final journey to the grave. In religious terms, a “corporal work of mercy,” a mandate of kindness: “To bury the dead.”
And so I see across the generations to my grandfather, and I look at the images my lens captured and wonder what he would see. I’ll never know, of course. And I’m not sure of all that I myself saw. In the way the photographs came together, in the nanosecond it takes to capture an image on film, there arises a certain spirituality, an other worldliness if you will, most of which is unintended.

Casket/Couch, Furman Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Preacher, S.B. Rawls Mortuary, Chicago Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

First Viewing, Ramsey Memorial Chapel, Detroit, Michigan

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Pete Smith, P.M. Smith & Sons, Oak Park, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Mr. Stokes in the Casket Showroom, Stokes-Marr Mortuary, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Matriarch, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Outside Room C with Jeff, Furman Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Candy at Columbian Funeral Home, Franklin Park, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Herbert C. Barker, Barker’s Mortuary, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Owner’s Daughter, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Owner, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Interior, Postlewait Co., Oak Park, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Les Papke’s Personal Favorite, Postlewait Co., Oak Park, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

In Front of the Moveable Fireplace, Postlewait Co., Oak Park, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Eulalio and the Tombstone Mistake, De Vriendt Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Eulalio and the Embalmer, De Vriendt Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Hoist and Valentine, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

My Grandfather’s Sink, Ramsey Memorial Chapel, Detroit, Michigan

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Mr. Ramsey in my Grandfather’s Embalming Room, Ramsey Memorial Chapel, Detroit, Michigan

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Make-Up, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Suture, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Grooming, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Driver, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Casket Carriage, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Buried with Honors, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Honor Guard, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Mourners, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Wreath Makers, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Scraping a Wreath Stand, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Cemetery Worker, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Sexton, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Sexton’s Son, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Burial Day, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Sealing the Vault, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Pallbearer’s Gloves, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Earth, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Untitled, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Untitled, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

The Gravedigger, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-

Daniel in the Crematorium, Chicago, Illinois

The Mortician's Grandson, 2000-