The Life Cycle

scroll down for many more images from this chapter

The cycle of birth, marriage and death is the most conspicuous marker-system in our lives as human beings. Records of these significant events are kept by church and state, but beyond the paper documentation, we — as individuals and in families — have long sought to commemorate the special events and rites of passage that mark the life cycle: baptisms, first communions and bar mitzvahs, graduations, birthdays, marriages and anniversaries, family reunions and leave-takings. Two hundred years ago, the well-to-do captured an essence of themselves in formal portrait paintings; today, we do the same via studio photo-portraits, through our own still photography, and — in the late twentieth century — with that ever-present record-keeper of the modern world, the camcorder.