Drawing by Armande Oswald.
Sometimes, we know the deceased only through images preserved by their relatives. Like this grandmother whose features are familiar to the grandchildren that never met her...
MHNN, private collection
Sculpture, Ousmane Sow / Photo: Catherine Meyer
Recumbent figure of Victor Noir, a young journalist shot to death by Prince Pierre Bonaparte in 1870. Every day, flowers are placed on this grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
Photo: Marc Juillard |
|
These are the thumbnails and texts for this alcove. They can be printed.
Depicting the Body : The Illusion of Presence
Thanks to the innumerable artists who have engraved, drawn, painted and sculpted the human body, we now have a vast gallery of portraits - with varying degrees of artistic license - of past generations. But the representation of the body has changed with the advent of photography, cinema, video, and most recently, a virtual context that places these images in real settings.
These new technologies have a magical power of putting us into direct contact with the dead. It is no longer a question of interpreting the body, but of seeing it as if it were alive once more. Furtive images recall forgotten moments and people. An infinite swarm of ghosts from the past. emerges from oblivion and comes to life before our eyes.
Beloved, cheery, transformed, wounded, worshipped bodies suddenly appear. For a second, a minute or an hour, we view a precise moment in time. A moment that feels like eternity. The illusion is almost perfect: the photograph could come to life and the person walk off the screen. But no, it’s only a scrap of film or paper. The dream may be sweet or it may be sad. |
