Death: Loss and Reflection

Like the tipi liner that celebrated Cehupa’s accomplishments, Nathaniel Currier’s The Life and Age of Man (1835–56) and James S. Baillie’s The Life and Age of Woman (1848) urge viewers to ponder life and the moments that define it. To quote scholar Lloyd Warner, these prints exhibit rites of passage quite broadly, following “a man through his lifetime, from a fixed placental placement within his mother’s womb to his death and ultimate fixed point of his tombstone . . . punctuated by a number of critical moments of transition which all societies ritualize and publicly mark with suitable observations.”† The two lithographs follow a man and a woman as they grow from infants into elders. Both prints situate a group of figures atop a tiered podium, which is flanked by two trees; the trees on the left lush and vibrant, those on the right dead or wilting. Currier and Baillie dissect the lives of an archetypal Englishman and Englishwoman (respectively) for their prints, breaking them up into a series of eleven stages. Beneath every stage, Currier and Bailie wrote a small couplet to correspond with that point in the lives of both men and women. Both artists approach the eleventh and final stage with a hint of resignation. They address their figures’ certain demise, with Currier noting, “If we should reach the hundredth year, though sick of life, the grave we fear.” Bailie’s perspective is equally bleak: “Chained to her chair by weight of years—she listless knits till death appears.” Both artists are keen to address death directly, but their figures turn their backs on death, quite literally. The final renditions of man and woman are both seated, facing their past selves and acknowledging the lives that they led. Death may not be personified anywhere in either print, but it covertly, firmly establishes itself as the end to each character’s lifecycle. They know that life is transient, and death will greet them soon.

Dmitri Baltermants honors vitality and long life with his photograph Golden Anniversary Celebrants (2003). The gelatin silver print captures an elderly Russian couple celebrating their fifty years of marriage. The husband wears medals recognizing his military valor, and his wife wears a simple dotted dress adorned with a white lace collar. They stand beaming across a table, which has been set for their celebratory feast. Chances are, they have spent well over half their lives with one another. This particular rite of passage is unique because, while it does not necessarily entail any material transitions from “x” to “y,” it acknowledges a life of spent sharing rites of passage. From marriage to raising a child, these golden anniversary celebrants have borne witness to countless material rites of passage and, in this moment, are enjoying a symbolic one. Neither appears to be concerned with life’s end or corporal demise. Instead, they enjoy the company of their loved ones and celebrate their enduring union with cake to eat and wine to drink.