PADDY MAGDON
About Memento Mori
Memento Mori depicts several Roman Catholic saints - including Saint Agnes, Saint Joseph, and Saint Sebastian - through the lens of Victorian mourning photography. They are a reflection of past traditions, including the history of death in art such as post-mortem and Victorian mourning photography. Mourning photography took the form of portraits of widowers dressed in black garments as they enacted the various stages of mourning. The aesthetics of gloom and sorrow are exaggerated as a means of embracing or celebrating the end of life and grief. The images speak to the inherently dark nature of loss and grieving while accepting the certainty of one's demise. The decrepitness of the photographs is reflective of the natural process of decomposition that occurs after bereavement and acts as a reminder of the inevitability of decay. Reflecting on death allows us to deepen our perspective on our lives. Memento Mori is an ode, or an elegy, to post-mortem and Victorian mourning photography, and the morbid purpose they served.
About Paddy
Paddy Magdon is a film and photography BFA from Ithaca, New York. They work primarily with film photography, including 35mm and medium format film. They are inspired by the dark and rough aesthetic of early photographic practice, including mourning and post-mortem tintypes. In their most recent work, Paddy uses experimental techniques such as bleaching and scratching the film’s emulsion to achieve a look of deterioration and decay.