Since 2019 I’ve worked as a funeral arranger in South London. In 2024 I made 50 booklets, titled ‘Loved Ones’, to give to friends. With luck, a QR code on this booklet has brought you here.
As you may have noticed, ‘Loved Ones’ is in the style of an Order of Service booklet, produced for funerals, with hymns, poems, photographs etc.
Instead of this kind of content, ‘Loved Ones’ features photos I have taken of funeral flowers. Specifically, these form letters that spell out words identifying who the deceased person was to others. Wife, husband, mum, dad, nan, grandad, son, daughter, sister, brother, niece, uncle, aunt, twin, cousin, friend.
In each case the flowers give recognition to a person who has slipped beyond language, beyond this naming. They outwardly express the private sadness of individuals intimately connected to that person, and they remind us of the commonality of loss. They tug at us all in some way.
I’ve noticed that tributes like these feature in the majority of the funerals I’ve organised in South London, irrespective of whether a deceased person’s background is Caribbean, African, East Asian, Middle Eastern or European.
Are they more a part of funerals in big cities, I wonder, where it is harder for the impact of an individual to be felt?
On show for everyone to see as the hearse makes its way through the streets, the flowers powerfully evoke connections with friends and family – what anthropologist Lévi-Strauss termed Kinship Structures. I have yet to see one that says nurse, or vet, or accountant!
I photographed the flowers at the funeral home, just before a funeral ‘went out’. They had sometimes been placed in readiness outside on the pavement or been newly loaded into the hearse. (In some cases, they were in too small a space to capture completely).
I have asked clients if it is all right to photograph their flowers, and the answer has always been yes. It’s clear these funeral flowers are intended to be public.
And so it’s seemed in keeping for me to make this booklet about this particular way that those who are grieving pay tribute.