Photographer Mandy Lin (林毓如) was on the job capturing newlywed bliss at a wedding when she found herself thinking about death.
“I suddenly wondered, if someone was willing to document a funeral in the same way and could present scenes as heartwarming as a wedding, whether it would give the family [of the deceased] even more beautiful memories,” Lin tells the Taipei Times.
Lin put the idea to work immediately. In the six years since, she estimates that she has photographed about 400 funerals, proving that demand for such an unconventional service does exist.
Photo: Mandy Lin
The afterlife represents a new vista for commercial photography in Taiwan. But with deep-seated taboos around death making it a constant object of fear and denial, Lin is increasingly finding herself in the role of an educator of how to die — and thereby live — well.
FACING MORTALITY
By the time she started photographing funerals, Lin had already spent eight years in the industry in a variety of roles, having obtained professional licenses to be an undertaker and mortuary make-up artist.
Photo: Mandy Lin
As a photographer, she aims to capture expressions, embraces and interactions that will remind the grieving family of their love for the departed and for each other.
“Sorrow actually fades with time. One day it will not be there anymore, but love will last forever,” she says. “When your sorrow has gone but you look back on these images with love, you will find that this person’s life has been documented in a way that is more complete.”
Lin is driven by the knowledge that an inability to look death in the eye can actually make grief more painful for the living.
Photo: Mandy Lin
One of Lin’s most memorable jobs took place in 2017, when she received a request from a former schoolmate to document the funeral of his younger brother.
Lin recalls a funeral that was full of regrets. The deceased had taken his life by ingesting pesticide. His death had taken place over a few days, as the poison spread slowly. The whole time, the deceased kept his suicide attempt from his family and doctors.
By the time he was admitted to a hospital and the reason for his condition was brought to light, doctors informed the family that it was too late to save him and advised them to mentally prepare for his death. They reacted by encouraging the dying man to keep fighting. He ended up passing away without exchanging farewells with his family and four young children.
Photo: Mandy Lin
It’s a cautionary tale that, with her schoolmate’s permission, Lin now brings to the schools and nursing programs that invite her to speak about cultivating healthy attitudes toward death. The message she imparts is to come to terms with mortality, and to understand grief as a by-product of meaningful relationships.
“People become sorrowful because we’re filled with deep emotions, fond memories and love toward [each other],” she says.
The stress on familial bonds in fact makes funerals surprisingly similar to weddings in function and even form — so much so that Lin is exploring the idea of mounting an exhibition juxtaposing her funeral and wedding photography.
Photo: Davina Tham, Taipei Times
“They seem so clashing, even antagonistic, but actually they are the same type of thing,” she says.
Lin cites the example of the portion in a wedding ceremony when the bride kneels before her parents to give her gratitude and say farewell (拜別). Her parents then cover her face with the veil and send her off to her newlywed home. The similarities to the closing of the casket, when family members gather around to say their last words to the departed, are uncanny.
“They are both a kind of separation and a blessing,” she says, “just that one is an eternal farewell.”
Photo: Mandy Lin
CHANGING WITH THE TIMES
Lin was an undergraduate studying business administration when she first heard a funeral practitioner speak to students about career options, and decided to make it her livelihood. Her parents reacted with disbelief, but had no objections. Lin now considers herself lucky to have started her career at a time when the stigma around death care was beginning to subside.
“Taiwanese did not have much respect for people who worked in the funeral industry” even just a decade ago, she says. They were avoided for superstitious as well as social reasons, as the profession had negative associations with triads, crime and a lack of education.
Photo: Mandy Lin
But death is life’s greatest leveler. Even as funeral practitioners were ostracized, they also provided services that were needed one day, inevitably and without exception. Lin’s own clients have ranged from a former chief of the general staff to a “heavenly king” (天王) celebrity, for whose funeral she had to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Lin credits the Japanese movie Departures — which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008 — for improving popular perception of the funeral industry in more recent years. The film, based on the memoirs of a Japanese undertaker, tells the story of an unemployed musician who finds his calling in the funeral industry, despite the misgivings of friends and family.
“The movie actually depicted [the profession] in a way that I felt was very romanticized, but it didn’t show the hard work involved in being an undertaker,” Lin says. The job entails being on call 24/7, which commonly takes a toll on the health and personal lives of funeral practitioners.
Lin says that the funeral industry experiences a high turnover rate because of unrealistic expectations. But it is not in danger of aging out of existence, as young people continue to join its ranks, encouraged by government measures to professionalize the industry.
When the Funeral Industry Management Regulations (殯葬管理條例) were passed into law in 2002, they represented the first laws in over a century to address death care. The regulations helped to raise industry standards by requiring registration of funeral businesses, introducing professional licenses for key funeral roles and improving transparency around funeral charges, which can go up to around NT$300,000 in the Taipei area.
These changes may make Lin’s career path more viable, but her interest in the afterlife dates back to her upbringing in a Buddhist-Taoist household.
By her own admission, Lin is drawn to the most potent yin (陰) aspects of local folk traditions, traveling around northern and central Taiwan to photograph traditional Buddhist-Taoist temple rites in her spare time.
Her job is at times a perfect synthesis of these passions. In June, she was able to photograph a rare “crossing the golden bridge” (過金橋) ritual, in which family members help the spirit of a deceased relative cross over peacefully into the afterlife.
The full suite of elaborate Buddhist-Taoist death rituals is becoming rarer and rarer, as people balance demands on convenience and money. To Lin, what is lost is not merely cultural heritage, but a still relevant, profoundly human way of coming to terms with death.
“The main objective for the existence of these rituals is that bit by bit, they familiarize you with the reality of death, and give you a way to participate directly,” she says. “There is an aspect of consoling grief.”
During the “crossing the golden gate” ritual, Lin recalls that the mere sight of a male acolyte dressed as a woman — a common practice to fill a ceremonial role that must be performed by a female — brought mirth to the mourners. The priest and his assistant occasionally made wisecracks and gags that elicited laughs.
Lin jokes that one side-effect of her job is that she does not save as much money as others. Paying witness to the range of human experiences around death has reminded the young woman to seek joy in the present.
“Happiness really has to be in this moment, because when you say tomorrow, it’s not a given that everyone gets to have that tomorrow.”
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