Anatomy of a Dress

In “Life Before Death”, German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta took interviews and portraits of hospice patients just before death, then portraits just after. The prose the accompanies each photo is almost more jarring than the portraits themselves:

Barbara Gröne, 51
All her life, Barbara had been plagued by the idea that she has no right to be alive. She had been an unwanted baby: soon after her birth, her mother had put her into a home. But she had a strong survival instinct, and became very focused, she said, very disciplined in the way she lived. After much hard work, it seemed that life was at last delivering her a better hand.

But then the cancer struck: an ovarian tumour, which had already spread to her back and pelvis. Nothing could be done. Abruptly her old fears returned: the familiar sense of worthlessness and sadness. At the end of her life, Barbara told me that she was overwhelmed by these feelings. “All my efforts were in vain”, she said. “It is as though I am being rejected by life itself.”