Soulumination Remembrance photographers use a documentary style to capture timeless images.
Six days before her due date,a pregnant Seattle woman learned during a routine doctor's appointment that her baby no longer had a heartbeat. She had lost her son to a virus that can be deadly to fetuses. The mother decided to deliver him naturally, rather than via caesarean section. Then she faced another decision: Would she like a professional photographer to capture the few moments she would have with her stillborn son? A photo shoot with a dead baby may sound morbid, especially in a culture that tends to be uncomfortable with death. But remembrance photography provides grieving parents with lasting memories of their children who lived so briefly that little else exists to remember them by. Parents say that the professional images are easier to look at than the ones they took themselves. "The photos validate the experience of the parents, and prove the baby existed when oftentimes there are so few memories and things to show,” said Faustine Dufka, a University of Washington anthropology student, whose undergraduate honors thesis explored the role of remembrance photography in parental grief.
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