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When Your Worst Fear Is Realised
Three months ago, Bryony’s life changed forever. Three months on, she reflects on the moment her world was ripped apart, how it links her to childhood fears and a new found sense of invincibility.
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Handling Death
Susan Elaine Jones invites you to spend time with human remains, her own interactions with skulls and bones have allowed her to engage beyond the scientific, a warm and enriching experience. Here she shares more about the events she hosts to allow others this opportunity.
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Making a Mourner: The Life, Love and Grief of Courtney Lane
Hairwork Artist, Courtney Lane explains the Victorian tradition of sentimental hairwork and her lifelong fascination with it. It’s just as easy to chalk it up to a series of peculiar happenstances in her life that led her here, but neither of these explanations tells the whole story.
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Art is Not About Pretty Things
Artist Sara Lucas challenges us to see the transience in beauty. Three years on from her breast cancer diagnosis she reflects on the moment her priorities changed. A few fashion magazines and marker pens later she felt alive. After all, we’re all going to die anyway, pretty or not!
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Nothingness, Acceptance, Resurrection: Creating a Second Life
By Mia-Jane Harris My work delves into the curious, fascinatingly odd and morbidly beautiful. I make intriguing juxtapositions between the gorgeous and the macabre, aiming to intrigue the viewer and pull them in to my world with strange objects and morbid curios to manipulate their emotions on the subject of mortality – life, death & resurrection.…
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The Vampire’s Flight
Claire L. Smith is back with another beautiful work of poetry. This time she explores the fragility of human mortality through a familiar figure… “She watched in a darkened awe, As in the dove’s beady eyes she saw, Nothing but a bloodied empty throne, Surrounded by rusting raven bones.”
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Maiden’s Bloom: The Art of Emilia Olsen
Olsen’s faceless maidens, with their pink, sun-kissed flesh, confront their mortality and heartbreak with the age-old symbol of vanitas – a grinning, bleached skull. Much like Persephone dragging the lush flora down with her descent into Hades, Olsen’s subjects embrace the darkest part of their ego within a state of botanic euphoria.
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Prince Deserved a Good Death
Two years on, Caroline Reilly reflects on Prince’s death. Looking back at her own experiences of pain and prescription medication, she finds a clearer picture of this ephemeral man and her heart aches for the way he died, enraged at how badly society failed him both when he was living and after he died.
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Saving Face: Death, Necropolitics and the Hiroshima Maidens
Dr Becky Alexis-Martin introduces the Hiroshima Maidens. Their happiness was fundamental to state in diverting attention from the harm caused by the American attack upon Hiroshima. They were given a Western “rebirth” in the USA, their otherness neutralised by reconstructing them socially, culturally, and to some extent even physically in the image of the American…
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In The Future, We are Dead
German artist Eva Müller created this incredible graphic novel for her final year project at art school. Here she opens up about her own fear of death and the personal experiences that inspired this creation. You can support a campaign to get a copy of your very own too.
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Drop My Body On The Steps Of The FDA: Death, Queer Activism & Advocacy During the HIV/AIDS Crisis
It turns up in health class and sometimes in history books, but the scope of the AIDS epidemic is far off and fuzzy. Sam Wall takes a close look at the government failings and acts of courage. Unless you read accounts by survivors or queer scholars, the full impact of the crisis is lost. The…
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Breakfast, Then Death
This work of short fiction by Claire L. Smith centres on the death of a victim of domestic abuse. Her trauma so embedded, she mindlessly continues her everyday life as she dies. Please note that although this post does not contain graphic descriptions of violence, it does contain graphic descriptions of injury.
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Le Bizarreum
Juliette is bring death positivity to France. Her YouTube channel, Le Bizarreum explores death through historical and archaeological cases.
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The Grief Geek
Not only does Caroline Lloyd refers to Death and the Maiden as glamorous and cool (thank you Caroline!) she shares her personal and professional journey of grief. Experiences that became the motivation behind her new book: Grief Demystified. The book she wrote that she so desperately wanted when she had disenfranchised grief and had no…
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Archaeology, Death Positivity and Public Engagement
Robyn Lacy entered the field of Archaeology with vague ideas of how she wanted to proceed. Every one of which got tossed out the window after a trip to Ireland, surveying rural Catholic and Anglican cemeteries and churchyards. Robyn hasn’t swayed from burial-related study since.
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Iris Schieferstein’s Death and The Maiden
Gabriella Daris met German sculptor and taxidermy artist, Iris Schieferstein, at her studio—43km outside of Berlin, by the Langer See (Long Lake)— where she encountered giant freezers filled with carcases— major raw materials for the artist’s work.
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Double Take at Sharon Tate
This summer marked 48 years since the brutal murder of Sharon Tate and her unborn son. After discovering crime scene photographs framed at Hollywood’s Museum of Death; Tia Price reflects on the lasting legacy of this valley doll, icon and mother.
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To My Father
Allison Carvalho has many questions. Questions like: Were you drunk when you did it? Did your mental illness amplify your alcoholism or was it the other way around? Where did you think you would go? Where DID you go?
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After Suicide
Following her father’s suicide, Charlotte Underwood attempted to take her own life. From the depths of grief, depression and anxiety emerged a desire to challenge mental health stigma and raise awareness.
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The Luminary
The Luminary was created by Mavis Frempong. It is an environment that commemorates death and also opens up conversations about it. RESEARCH PERSONAS Based on Interviews SITE ANALYSIS I have proposed a new build to be located at Queen’s Drive, Edinburgh. I have chosen this site because it is a beautiful, serene environment that harmonises with…
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The Joys of Soul Midwifery
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Beauty in Decomposition: An Interview With Artist AJ Hawkins
Death & the Maiden co-founder, Sarah Chavez, talks to artist AJ Hawkins about her recent series, The Reclamation, which beautifully examines the decomposition of human bodies and the nutrient cycle through art.
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Tubercular Venus: When the Beauty Standard was Dying
If society’s beauty standard dictates a ‘proper’ woman should have pale skin and wear a crinoline that makes it near impossible for her walk through a doorway, chances are, that is a society that believes a woman’s place is in the home. So what does it say about a culture when the height of beauty…
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Sex & Death: Santa Muerte’s Strong LGBT Following
Enduring discrimination and even persecution at times makes the fierce, female skeleton saint especially attractive to those who’ve been ostracized, taunted or even subjected to physical violence because of their alternative sexual orientation. World leading expert on Santa Muerte, Andrew Chesnut has observed this special attraction from the outset of his research eight years ago. Introducing us…
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On Death, Patriarchy & the Anti-Choice Movement
Death-phobia pervades many a political and social movement, but few have perfected the manipulation of it quite as adeptly as the “pro-life movement.” Their rhetoric invokes death at almost every turn. Aside from the most blatant messaging which explicitly likens abortion to murder, they also invoke death-phobia in the way they legislate abortion. Caroline Reilly is…
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Dead Good Gifts 2016
It’s that time of year. Some of us will be sitting back with a smug sense of achievement, whilst others pretending they have plenty of time. Here at Death and the Maiden we have complied our annual list of wondrous deathly fem gifts. There should be plenty of inspiration for your last minute dash and…
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What The Texas Fetal Remains Ruling Really Means and How You Can Take Action
Last Monday, after the Texas State Department of Health Services announced the addition of the word ‘cremation’ to their list of approved methods of disposition for the remains of an abortion or miscarriage, headlines were quick to appear suggesting a forced linkage between certain women’s health services and those of the funeral industry. Still in…
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Protest, politics & power: the tales of martyrs Anne Askew & Margaret Pole
Nikki Shaill, Director of Art Macabre Death Drawing salons and Drawn at the Tower, discusses the lives and deaths of two female martyrs from English history. On Wednesday evening, an event will take place inviting guests to draw these figures on the site where they were both executed and buried at Tower of London’s Chapel…
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A Celebration of Death
Festival of Ian Smith, 28th October – 23rd December, 2017 at Edinburgh’s Summerhall is set to be an eclectic mix of art, music, performance and installation – all investigating, challenging, confronting or celebrating death. The festival explores why we often find it difficult to talk about death in our society, and how art and artists…
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The Punished Suicide
Ivan Cenzi brings a strange story of suicide to Death and the Maiden this week. One beginning with sorrow and ending in spectacle. It’s 1863 and on hearing of a young girl’s suicide, anatomist Lodovico Brunetti requests her body be brought to him for experiments. What evolves from his casting and preservation work is unexpected.…
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Strengthen Your Sense of Smell While Contemplating Your Doom
We live in a culture that rejects scent the same way that it denies the reality of death. Nuri McBride is here to explain that perfume is olfactive art, like visual arts and music it has the power to move, soothe and inspire people. Nuri is creator of ‘Scent the Scene’ an exercise in perfumery, meditation…
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An Intimate Evening With Death Herself
Douglass Truth woke up after 3 days and didn’t remember anything of the time, but it was like he had been taken somewhere and given something to bring back. The journey from here Douglass found himself on was unexpected to say the very least. One of change, discovery and realization. Tonight we meet Dorothy and learn that…
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Little Miss Funeral
Lauren LeRoy is a funeral director from New York State. Entering mortuary school at nineteen, she had no idea what she was in for. Lauren reflects on her experiences in a male dominated industry and on why her job is so important. This beautiful dedication to her Grandfather’s memory takes us back to a snowy…
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A Better Understanding of Death
Last Thursday Death & the Maiden’s Lucy Talbot attended the Good Funeral Awards, as we had been nominated for the “Most Significant Contribution to the Understanding of Death” award 2016. Here Sarah and Lucy (the Maidens) reflect on the values at the core of their mission and introduce to you the other nominees in the…
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Life On Mars
There is something in the work of photographer Karen Jerzyk that cannot be put into words. The otherness of a world created from the abandoned and discarded is captured with a deep, dark softness. Each image tells us a story only our emotions can read. Karen shares her journey onward from her father’s sudden death…
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Sweet Fanny Adams
On this day 149 years ago, eight year old Fanny Adams was brutally murdered by Frederick Baker, a 29 year old solicitor’s clerk. Her grave still stands in Alton Cemetery, adorned lovingly with teddies, tea lights and flowers. Perhaps her name is familiar to you. Maybe you have heard the phrase “Sweet Fanny Adams” or “Sweet…
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Help Me Bring Them Back From The Dead
What started as googling, quickly became a visit to California and resulted in a rather sad discovery. In Hollywood, there are so many graves of long-forgotten or barely remembered stars that once shined brightly on the silver screen. This is not how these women should be remembered. Their stories should be told. Remembering them for who they were and…
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Talk is cheap. Burials are not: Why only telling people what you want for your funeral is not enough
Amber Carvaly is back on Death & the Maiden today to discuss a subject very close to her heart. As one half of Undertaking LA, Amber encourages anybody and everybody to talk about death, dying and their wishes for the end of life. Although this is important (and she makes clear it absolutely is) Amber…
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Amy Winehouse, Patron Saint of Camden
Today marks the fifth anniversary of Amy Winehouse’s death. In tribute, Death & the Maidens’ own Lucy Talbot reflects on first hearing the news and celebrates Amy’s legacy by examining the impact her passing had on the place she loved most. Gone but never forgotten. We love you Amy.
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The Wise Owl: Part I
Lewis Barfoot takes us to the darkest and most desperate days of grief. Sharing with us how her recent loss has affected both her life and her song. Her music and musical practice became driftwood for her sinking sailor. The most resilient flotation device you could imagine.
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#BoneLifeWife
Regina Marie Cohn left a success career in fashion to work by her husband artist Ryan Matthew Cohn’s side. Embracing her inner shadow, Regina explains how she began on this intriguing journey and found true purpose and passion amongst the specimens and oddities of their New York home. With so many exciting projects underway we…
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Leila & Mary Rachel Bryan
Driven by a need to unravel mysteries, particularly those that require some dissection of human behavior, Jennifer Darling embarked on her latest project: And They Were. Profiling cases involving missing persons, unidentified remains, and other “cold” investigations as well as providing a means to satisfy her curiosity. For Death & the Maiden, Jennifer presents the disappearance of…
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The Deathtivals
For Erica Buist, The Deathtivals Project didn’t come directly out of grief. It came out of her reaction to it. From snooping in a dead man’s fridge to computer investigations, Erica found herself on a journey of extreme anxiety and agoraphobia following the loss of someone it seemed she wasn’t entitled to grieve. This project…
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The Little Book of Burial
Krista Amira Calvo takes us on a journey across the globe with The Little Book of Burial. A playful hands on experience that sheds light on different cultures and their burial practices. Exploring the evolution of burial and some rituals that are no longer practiced but still very iconic and recognisable to us. This delightful…
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Rachel The Film
Karen Anstee is weeks away from the filming of Rachel. A short film about the complex relationships between love, death, family and religion. As writer and director, Karen shares insight into what inspired the project as well as some of the beautiful locations the production team will be shooting at. Ultimately, Rachel is an exploration of the…
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Sleeping Beauty
A beautiful work of fiction for you this week from Angie McLachlan. Capturing the essences of a myriad of deaths, feelings and experiences, plucked from her 25 years serving families & caring for the dead through the sacred art and science of Embalming. Making clear this is more than just a job, Angie delves into the…
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Keening & the Death Wail
S Elizabeth interviews musician Gemma Fleet of The Wharves on her project “Lost Voices” which explores vocal improvisation in folk culture. Volume 1. “Keening and the Death Wail” has roots in Fleet’s own childhood. She believes she encountered an Irish traveler funeral; an “unhindered display of grief” wherein the woman in mourning was not being hushed,…
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Death Becomes Her: Marilyn Monroe’s Posthumous Career
Ruth Penfold-Mounce tells us how it can pay (literally) to be a celebrity in death. Companies may choose the immortalised over the high maintenance to be the face of their brand. Marilyn Monroe is a shining example of this. She has her own perfume line, appears on all kinds of products & has even appeared…
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The Crime Museum Uncovered
Yesterday, after six months this long awaited exhibition at the Museum of London came to an end. With plans for New Scotland Yard to close the future of the Metropolitan Police’s infamously known “Black Museum” is uncertain. This carefully curated exhibition allowed the public to experience a selection of the items found inside. Many still…
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Stitching Mortality
Rebecca Hampton creates embroidery inspired by Victorian mourning practices and the fragility of our own mortality. Drawing influence from Post-Mortem Photography and historic funeral customs each piece becomes it’s own beautiful little Memento Mori.
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Shrouds or Lingerie? Traditional Female Burial Garments
Patricia Lundy explores the relationship between death & the feminine regularly on her beautiful blog Somthng Eldritch. Through exploration of literature and Victorian history Patricia delves into the mourning rituals of a bygone era. In this post sexual suggestion and the male gaze is contemplated by visiting the works of two amazing authors. Kate Mayfield…
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
Death & the Maiden’s own Sarah Chavez (Troop) shares the horrifying story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City on March 25, 1911. An entire nation grieved over the 148 deaths that occurred that day, so easily preventable. Their collective outrage changed U.S. labor laws and led to the adoption of fire…
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World Anthropology Day
From the moment Myeashea Alexander heard the American Association of Anthropology announce there would be a day dedicated to the celebration of anthropology she knew she wanted to celebrate through outreach. Taking a hands on approach Myeashea created a forensic anthropology lab for the kids at local Brooklyn public school, Bedford Village Elementary. Exploring the…
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On The Street With Saint Death In Tepito, Mexico
Dr Andrew Chesnut is author of the only book on Saint Death in both Mexico & the US. Here he shares the experience of attending The Santa Muerte rosary service held in Tepito, Mexico City’s most notorious barrio. This is the signature public ritual of the burgeoning cult of the skeleton saint. Accompanied by talented…
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Rest In Pieces
To celebrate the paperback release of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, author Bess Lovejoy is giving away a signed copy of her book. Rest in Pieces catalogs stories from the age of antiquity to today, tracing the evolution of cultural attitudes toward death and connecting the lives of the famous deceased…
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“I think I’d like to change into a sunflower most of all”
Death & the Maiden’s co-founder Lucy Talbot sees Harold & Maude as the ultimate death positive film. Originally released in 1971, the film was a box office flop. Only in the 1980s did it begin to profit and build a cult following. The lessons that Countess Mathilda Chardin has for young Harold Chasen will change his…
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Death and the Birth of Feminism
Whether you believe the Fox sisters possessed supernatural powers or were masters of deception, one thing is for sure. What began as a rapping on the wall quickly became fame & fortune. Spiritualism was at its height & provided a platform for women to speak out. Death & the Maiden’s Sarah Chavez explains that women became…
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The Best Of 2015
Women and death, particularly the role women are currently playing in the death positive movement and as death professionals made frequent headlines this year. Here’s a recap of what 2015 had to offer from our co-founder Sarah Troop.
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Widows and Virgins: The Curse of Being a Single Woman
Contrary to many death rituals I’ve read about previously, the widow bore the burden of “exaggerated observance of mourning customs” not out of respect for her deceased husband, but so that she did not become “infected” by the dead and his ghost, for it was the widow who was “especially liable to death infections.” One of these mourning customs,…
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Life Of Pie
The colors are a deep burnt umber and it becomes increasingly brown as it spreads from the center to the tawny crispy crust that holds it all together. And when I close my eyes, I can hear my mom, beaming aloud about how proud she is that she made it, telling me the story about…
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Dead Good Gifts 2015
It’s the eve of December and the countdown is officially on. It’s time to start thinking about Christmas gifts to avoid the last minute dash we all know and loath. If you want to shop independent then you need to start getting those orders in. Here at Death & the Maiden we have decided to help…
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Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs
Historian, Verity Holloway’s first novella Beauty Secrets of The Martyrs is about magic, makeup, crypts, and clownfish. But mostly, it’s about our obsession with keeping the dead around. Here Verity shares how this book began as a few notes and takes us back to her first encounter with the incorrupt body of Saint Spyridon in Corfu.…
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Monsters
“Be home when the street lights come on!” Was a common directive during many of our childhoods, as we anxiously ran out into the world to play. However, in my neighborhood and for many of us who lived out our childhoods on the East Side of Los Angeles that directive also came with a sinister…
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Deathly Maidens
Film maker Wesley Chambers shares his top five “Death and the Maiden” films with us. These are not only must see movies but also the masterpieces that influenced his latest film Ligatures. You can watch Wesley’s short film by following the link and find yourself on a seductively surreal journey with two deathly maidens.
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Is Taxidermy a “Girl Thing”?
I get called a lot of things by taxidermy enthusiasts, animal-rights activists, and the media. I’m apparently an instructor, an expert, a hipster, an animal hater, a sicko, a stuffer…but one of the most puzzling things I have been called recently is a “woman taxidermist” and I get asked the same question time and time…
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Skeletons & Young Girls
Even today, Death and the Maiden, depicted together, have lost nothing of their morbid and unsettling charm. And they still speak to the most hidden part of our souls; on one hand reminding us of the fleeting nature of the body, but suggesting on the other hand that there’s a secret complicity between beauty and…
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Natural Burial Grounds & Beyond
How much space is left? Why don’t we bury keen golfers in the rough or under the fairway, followers of the turf on the edge of race courses, football fans under the pitch? How much new woodland do we need? The more rural and stunning the landscape, the more local people do not want it altered.…
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A Lady Undertaker: 1912
In 1912 an American “Lady Undertaker” addresses the question of why women are especially suited to work with the dead.
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Death Dialogue in the City
Founder of The Parlor, Emerita Colon is all about launching mortality awareness is Chicago. Her own positive experience of a funeral “gotten right” in 2005 begged the question, why aren’t all funerals like this? Working in the world of death midwifery allows Emerita to contribute to a more community-direct, spiritual, hands and heart-oriented model of…
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Mrs Blunden of Basingstoke
Lucy Coleman Talbot shares the horrifying tale of her home town. Mrs Blunden, who was not buried alive once… but twice
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The Ascent of Female Funeral Celebrants
I find myself wondering what this line of work is like for all of the other women who choose to walk this path? How do I take the complexities and subtle communication skills that I have honed, and use and embody as a funeral celebrant, and express them to others in such a way that…
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Excavation & Emotion
I have been asking archaeologists how they go about their work as professionals and people as part of my PhD research in which I am exploring what impact emotion has on the practice of UK mortuary archaeology. I have interviewed and worked alongside field, forensic, academic, student and museum archaeologists, as well as osteologists and…
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Recording the Diseased & the Deceased: A Brief Look at the work of a Medical Photographer
Anni Skilton chose to pursue a career photographing the medically curious, the diseased and the deceased. Here she shares her experiences in various hospital departments, up close and personal capturing the incredible. An inevitable part of Anni’s job involves working with those at end-of-life as well as taking photographs postmortem.
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Fears, Hopes & Dreams
Grief and loss are a natural part of life, but we can never estimate the impact it will have on our day to day lives, it walks with us every day. When people truly disrupt our lives in both positive and negative ways they are never forgotten, they grow with us and shape us. I…
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Until Death Us Do Part
My Death and the Maiden pieces are little love poems about what might happen to the non-physical “us” after we die. I like to think of the best parts of us – LOVE – persisting when our meat and bones are no more.
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Female Professional Embalmer, 1900
Miss Katie Smith, daughter of the late Gran W. Smith, the only lady embalmer in the South, has made a long and successful study of the subject of embalming, and today she is recognized as one of the most proficient practicing that art. There has been a growing demand for her services recently, her reputation…
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Skeletons in My Life’s Closet
Jelena Bekvalac is a Curator of Human Osteology at the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology, Museum of London. As a life course becoming a museum curator and working with human skeletal remains was not one that she carefully planned. From exciting opportunities in London to excavations in Jordan and Prague Jelena takes us on a journey down her fascinating…
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The Passing Diaries
With a tearful embrace and our sobs of grief echoing throughout the arrival terminal, I fully realized the profound nature of our visit. Thirty minutes later we were at my mothers bedside.. her frail body illuminated by a single bulb above her head. The room was so quiet, the air still in anticipation of some…
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Transformative Powers through Making
How exactly did Yuli Somme go from making colourful hand-made felt tea cosies, felted seamless jackets and hats, and the occasional wall hanging to soft coffins? In this beautiful account of how creative direction can change rather unexpectedly we learn that the physical act of creation can release emotion, that from sorrow something truly life affirming can…
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Lost Souls
This week features one of Death & the Maiden’s favourite shops. Samantha Lyn owner of Funereal Ephemera collects postmortem photographs, memorial cards, funeral photographs and cemetery photographs. They’re forgotten, only to be revealed generations later, to modern eyes with a modern sense of death and mourning. A piece of history lost and found again. Samantha sees those…
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Perfume of the Dead
S. Elizabeth discusses the scent of death. Perfumes, oils, and other fragrances played a key role in the process of mummifying a body for burial, as well as denoting what status the person held in life. Scents of loss, grief, passage, and remembrance -perfumers and artistic noses have certainly attempted to create fragrances based around these timeless…
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