Victorians and the Art of Dying

In today;s society we have this very negative connotation in relation to death, we try and block out the fact that it is inevitable. The Victorians on the other hand celebrated death - made it into a grand thing - mourned for months, wore clothes that represented them mourning and slowly but surely, in their own time they got over their deceased. I found the idea of this rather quite beautiful however some of the techniques used to remember the dead/give them a 'Good death' was actually exceptionally creepy.

After a death had occurred, the ones that had been affected wore head to toe black and slowly reduced this colour as they started to improve, I personally thought this concept was great; people would give you the space and respect you were after.

Momento Mori was this idea of having something physical from the loved one that had died, for example a locket of their hair woven into a beautiful design that they wore in remembrance of their loved one.  

http://stoneplus.cst.cmich.edu/zoogems/hair-brooch.JPG

Families would make their dead children pose for photos whilst they held them, again, to have a physical copy of them. Death masks were also created to remember the dead - a plaster or clay cast of their face was made and kept.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
thumb/f/f9/001Paskal.JPG/220px-001Paskal.JPG

We were then asked to create a death mask of our own, however, not from the use of plaster cast but using make up to try and create the dramatic lighting that these masks have.

This was the first one I created in my lesson, I like it but I feel some areas need to be a lot darker to really give the impression that the face should actually be stone

I then created another one at home on myself, again with the same lighting (from the side of the face) so one half would be a lot darker. I really like this one as I worked on what I felt my flaw was in my previous on and I feel you can really tell. 

I then decided to try another lighting angle and this time from above, although very subtle you can still see it quite clearly.