Proceedings Article | 20 February 2007
KEYWORDS: Photography, Holography, Cameras, Holograms, Visualization, Digital holography, Optical design, Glasses, Image quality, Head
This paper examines the concept of the 'Presence of Absence' in post-mortem photography and
holography, drawing upon both historical and lesser-known images as reference. To create a
photographic negative one needs the presence of light to expose the light sensitive surface, be it
glass, a polished plate or plastic. A hologram may also be created when a coherent light source,
for example from a Laser, travels through a light sensitive material and falls upon the subject to
be recorded. A holograph however, retains the optical qualities of both phase and amplitude, the
memory of light. Both mediums recall, as it were, 'now absent moments', and confronts us with
what is 'not there' as much as 'what is'. This paper examines the exploration of absence and
presence in post-mortem photography and holography and it's a richly visceral visual language.
A photonic syntax can interpret death as an elegant yet horrific aesthetic, the photograph may be
beautify screened and yet obscene in its content. In essence one can be a voyeur, experiencing a
mere visual whisper of the true nature of the subject. Our Victorian forefathers explored postmortem
photography as an object of mourning, and at the close of the nineteenth century when
Jack the Ripper had the inhabitants of White Chapel in a grip of fear, photography made its
mark as a documentation of violent crime. Today, within contemporary photography, death is
now presented within the confines of the 'Art Gallery', as a sensual, and at times,
sensationalised art form. In exploring post-mortem imagery, both in holography and
conventional photography, absence presents an aspect of death as startling in its unanimated
form and detailed in its finite examination of mortality.
