13/4/2008
Life before death
Kunsthaus, Hamburg
When people die. The black-and-white photographs by Walter Schels present 25 stories of people with a life-limiting illness. These stories tell about the feeling of being close to death and the need to say goodbye to life. The impressive portraits were taken shortly before and immediately after death. With texts by Beate Lakotta.
The black-and-white photographs by Walter Schels present 25 stories of people with a life-limiting illness. These stories tell about the feeling of being close to death and the need to say goodbye to life. The impressive portraits were taken shortly before and immediately after death. There is hardly anything that moves us as much as an encounter with death. Nowadays, hardly anything happens as secretly as dying. The journalist Beate Lakotta and the photographer Walter Schels asked seriously ill patients whether they could accompany them during their last days and weeks.
These encounters produced sensitive portrayals and photographs of people at the end of their lives. The majority of them spent their last days in a hospice, a place to live while dying, where hopes and fears balance each other. Joining a hospice gives a dying person the possibility to improve the quality of his last days by being offered comfort and dignity. However, there is only a short period to draw the balance, to make peace with oneself and with others, to deal with death and the hereafter.
opening: Monday, 14th April 2008, 7 pm
Kunsthaus
Klosterwall 15 - Amburgo
open: Tues thru Sun 11 am - 6 pm