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At the heart of the exhibition are the funerary portraits, which depict the dead person in a kind of intimate and sympathetic still-life. Portraiture of this kind was routine to many professional photographers in the nineteenth century; they even advertised the service. Their serene pictures of the newly dead (especially young children), shown on their deathbeds as if in eternal slumber, were a commonplace of life at the time. This exhibition also includes present-day portraits of the dead. In both cases, the main purpose is to offer comfort and provide a souvenir of the person concerned. Photographers like Koos Breukel, F. Starik, Chantal Spieard and Wim van Ophem exhibit the last pictures taken by family and friends; Anton Corbijn and Paul Blanca have photographed their fellow artists like Herman Brood laid out for burial; Marrie Bot has recorded death scenes encountered by the police. In contrast to these emotionally involved depictions of dead individuals, the exhibition also includes more detached and clinical pictures which seek to emphasise the beauty and universality of death. The serene portraits of the dead by Andres Serrano, Rudolf Schäfer and Daniel & Geo Fuchs are modern versions of the memento mori: a reminder that death comes to us all.
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