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from Photographers Blog:
Ashes to ashes; dust to dust
Gainesville, Florida
By Steve Johnson
“Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.”
Its origins come from Genesis 3:19 (King James Verison): “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
We celebrate death in so many different ways. From sky burials in Tibet, to hanging coffins in ancient China, how we honor the dead is varied and changing.
In the United States and Canada, vault burials have grown in popularity since the early 1900s. With more than 19,000 funeral homes and 8,000 embalmers in the U.S. alone according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
So when Reuters contacted me about a conservation cemetery, one of four in the country, I was intrigued with the very niche market.
from Photographers Blog:
A sense of closure
By Darrin Zammit Lupi
I attended a brief and very poignant ceremony; the funeral of four Nigerian would-be immigrants who drowned while attempting to reach a better life, crossing to Europe by sea, crossing the central Mediterranean that has become a graveyard.
Six immigrants died on that crossing last August. Four bodies were recovered, including that of a fourteen year old boy.
from Photographers Blog:
Drive-thru funeral parlor
By Lucy Nicholson
Nina Watson maneuvered her silver Cadillac into the drive-thru and pulled up to a big plate glass window.
She stopped and rolled down the passenger window so her mother, Flo Watson, could get a better look at the lifeless body of her late co-worker, Robert Sanders, who lay in a casket behind the glass.
from FaithWorld:
Hong Kong funeral expo shows new ways to deal with the dead
(A TV journalist tries a coffin during Asia Funeral Expo (AFE) in Hong Kong May 19, 2011/Bobby Yip)
For the seven million citizens of Hong Kong, living comfortably in the one of the world's most densely populated cities is difficult enough, but dying presents is own set of challenges. Around 43,700 people died in the territory in 2010. By 2020 that number is expected to rise to almost 53,000. A majority will be cremated, since land shortages forced most people to abandon burials in the 1980s and cremations became acceptable.
from FaithWorld:
Paris death salon shows life and new trends in funeral industry
(A television journalist speaks to camera as she tests a coffin on show at the 'Salon de la Mort' -- Salon of Death -- in Paris April 7, 2011/Charles Platiau)
"Care to try out the coffin?" Surprised but intrigued, the young man lays himself down on the ivory satin fabric and holds his breath as the heavy lid closes over him. At the Salon of Death, everything is permitted.
from Russell Boyce:
Asia – A Week in Pictures, March 27, 2011
Japan continues to dominate the file from Asia with new photograhers rotating in to cover the twists and turns of this complex and tragic story. In a country were the nation rarely buries its dead, the site of mass graves is quite a shocking scene to behold. Holes the length of football pitches are dug in the ground with mechanical digggers and divided into individual plots by the military and are then filled with the coffins of the victims of the tsunami. Family members come to weep and pray over the graves. Some are namless and marked only with DNA details, others bear the names of the victims. There is not enough power or fuel to cremate the thousands of bodies that are being recovered from the disaster zone.
Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force carry a coffin of a victim of the earthquake and tsunami to be buried at a temporary mass grave site in Higashi-Matsushima, in Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan March 24, 2011. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao
from FaithWorld:
A Buddhist burial in the rain for Japanese tsunami victims
(At a funeral in Kassenuma town, Miyagi prefecture March 26, 2011/Carlos Barria)
Ten flimsy wooden coffins were laid on two sturdy rails at a hastily prepared cemetery of mostly mud as Keseunnuma began burying its dead from the tsunami that ripped apart the Japanese coastal city. Desperate municipalities such as Kesennuma have been digging mass graves, unthinkable in a nation where the deceased are almost always cremated and their ashes placed in stone family tombs near Buddhist temples. Local regulations often prohibit burial of bodies.
from FaithWorld:
Egyptian Copts hold funeral after Christian-Muslim strife kills 13
(Egyptian Coptic Christians gather for funeral of seven victims of sectarian clashes, at Samaan el-Kharaz Church in Cairo March 10, 2011/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
Thousands of Egyptian Christians attended an emotional funeral service on Thursday for people killed in the worst Christian-Muslim violence since Hosni Mubarak was toppled from power. Six coffins lay by a church altar during the ceremony, victims of the violence on Tuesday in which 13 people were killed and 140 wounded. A seventh coffin arrived later. Some held aloft signs with slogans that included: "No to sectarianism, no to murder," and "Farewell to the martyrs of Christ."
from FaithWorld:
Lasers and iPods for a Singapore funeral of a lifetime
An Ipod Touch can control the lighting, sound and smoke machines used in the funeral ceremony at the columbarium, May 15, 2010/Edgar Su
Death need not be a grim affair, especially for the living. At a new columbarium in Singapore, the deceased can depart, rock concert style. Unlike most traditional Buddhist funeral ceremonies that follow cremation, there is no incense and no monks offering prayers at the Nirvana Memorial Garden columbarium, where the urns holding the remains of the dead are stored.
from Photographers Blog:
A town of grief
The coffins of six British soldiers killed in Afghanistan are driven though the streets of Wootton Bassett in southwest England November 10, 2009. REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett
Since the early 2000's, the bodies of fallen servicemen and women from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places have been repatriated to RAF Lyneham. They pass through the town of Wootton Bassett on their way to the coroner in Oxford. This has led to family members, friends, locals and mourners from further afield assembling along the route of the funeral cortege. It is an emotionally charged event that garners wide media coverage every time.
