Ellie ’25 will spend some time over the summer photographing the elderly in her community and making memorial portraits for them to commemorate their life.
A memorial portrait is a portrait of the deceased used in funerals to commemorate their life. Although memorial portraits have been considered a sign of bad luck when taken too early in one’s life, recently, people of all age groups have taken these portraits voluntarily to record the most beautiful moments in their lives. In 2021, about 3,000 people in South Korea who do not have relatives or family members have been laid to rest without portraits at their funerals. Costly portrait fees and unexpected deaths are other reasons people inevitably use passport photos or cropped out faces from family pictures to take the place of memorial portraits.
My goal is to take memorial portraits of the elderly in nursing homes in Gyeonggi Province of South Korea, where organizations cannot afford to hire photographers to take memorial photos. This is a project I started in August of 2023 that I hope to continue this summer.
My goal will be met by delivering files and printed copies of memorial portraits to residents of the nursing homes. This grant has a special meaning for me because my grandfather used a cropped family photo for his memorial portrait. Through this project, I hope to highlight the treatment of the elderly in South Korea and raise awareness about opportunities at Deerfield to serve at assisted homes through the CSGC. I look forward to working with the elderly and lifting a burden off of their shoulders that my parents and relatives have also felt in the past.