About This Book
How do you sum up a life in a single image? That is the question faced by descendants in countries where the tradition is to put a portrait on graves in memoriam. This practice was widespread in the Former Soviet Union and continues to be in successor countries, including Ukraine.
If it was a long life, should that image look back to youth or represent life’s end? Should it be a lone portrait or include a spouse, reference life-time achievements or life-long interests? In Memoriam considers this twist on traditional portraiture; a portrait chosen for perpetuity. Shot on location in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Kherson and Poltava in Ukraine it surveys a range of approaches taken to solving this conundrum since the early years of the 20th Century.
