Tempus Fugit

"I wonder if it’s possible to have a second chance at life? I don’t think so. I’m not afraid of death — I’ll just be one of the million, billion grains of sand in the desert…"
Klara Behrens, 83

In 2008, German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta put together this accumlatory project, Life Before Death, twin sets of portraits of terminally ill indviduals before and after they die. In addition to the portraiture, Schels and Lakotta recorded interviews and conversations with the dying men and women over their final days, uncloaking much about both the bitter reality of death and the strangely wonderful (and oft bittersweet) process of being alive. It's a quite chilling and movingly gripping collection. This is, I realized halfway through writing, a collection two years past its prime, but that takes nothing away from the immediacy present therein, no matter what the date is. In fact, my being two years past this collection's prime seems somewhat appropriate given the fatal thematics of the collection. The only thing ever-lasting is death, mortality being the most permanently relevant topic out there. Not the most uplifting set of images but neither are they ignorable or unimportant. These images provide reminders of the brevity and the fragility of the lives we lead, and I'm grateful for the bravery and kindness of the individuals represented here in allowing their most frightening, vulnerable moments to be shown, albeit long after they can see it.