8:18am Wednesday 4th February 2009
By Emma Clayton
Draped in gold satin, she stands in her bedroom, with cuddly toys on the bed and a Britney Spears poster on the wall.
The teenage girl, wearing a replica of a designer dress worn at a movie premiere by Keira Knightley, is about to cross a threshold into womanhood, via her high school graduation ball.
Meanwhile, an elderly woman sits in her bedroom, surrounded by religious icons, with her best clothes laid out on her bed. These are the clothes she has chosen to wear for her final journey – death.
The role that clothing plays in two rites of passage – graduations and funerals – is explored by photographer Margareta Kern in her exhibition Clothes For Living And Dying, coming to Bradford this spring.
In Graduation Dresses, Margareta has photographed girls aged 18 and 19 posing in sexy, glamorous dresses which they’ve had made for graduation ceremonies. The girls pose in replicas of dresses worn by stars like Jennifer Lopez, Penelope Cruz and Catherine Zeta-Jones, trying to emulate their glossy Hollywood style. Split to the thigh with plunging cleavages, worn with strappy stilettos, the outfits are in stark contrast to the garments featured in Clothes For Death.
Here the photographs look at the final stages of life. Old women with weather-beaten faces sit in their homes alongside items of clothing they have chosen to be buried in after death.
The ritual of selecting and preserving clothes for death was something Margareta, 35, discovered when she returned to Bosnia recently. She grew up in Banja Luka and came to Britain as an asylum seeker in 1992, when the conflict in former Yugoslavia was starting.
Margareta returned to Bosnia to make videos at her family home, where her mother runs a small dressmaking business. “In this small space – subdivided into areas for sewing machines, pattern-cutting and a corner sofa, where numerous coffees are drunk and countless fashion magazines pored over – an intimate theatre of social interaction was taking place.”
While listening to the women’s conversations, Margareta heard about someone who had travelled to Zagreb to buy an outfit she wanted to be buried in. Fascinated by the ritual of preparing clothes for death, Margareta began doing some research.
“I didn’t know about it while growing up, it tends to be something only the older generation is aware of,” she says. “It’s very personal. People of my generation were surprised to discover their grandparents had chosen clothes to be buried in.
“It’s passed down from mother to daughter, but later in life. Some women start selecting their own burial clothes if someone close to them dies. Some I met have had clothes ready for 20 years! They wrap them carefully and keep them in cupboards.
“It’s not a formal tradition,” she adds. “I think its roots lie in the early 20th century when women getting married would bring with them clothing for their future children. Because so many women died in childbirth, they also prepared clothes for their own burial. “The tradition managed to weave through the Second World War, through post-war communism and industrialisation, and now it continues in capitalist Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
When Margareta photographed old women with their burial clothes, she found most lived in rural areas, where the custom had continued.
“It ties in with the tradition of the open casket, on view to mourners,” she says. “Clothes for death are the kind of best clothes worn for church on Sundays; things like dresses and jackets. Women want to be dressed well in death, so not to embarrass their families.”
Preparing for death is fairly commonplace in the UK – someone who knows they are dying may plan their own funeral, for example, and it’s not unusual for a widow to choose a smart suit for her husband to be buried in. But the process of selecting – often buying – particular clothes then storing them, unworn, to be dressed in exclusively in death is a relatively unknown concept, even in Bosnia.
“It seems to be mainly women who do it. I met women who’d prepared clothes for their husbands,” says Margareta.
“Clothes for death are always new, never worn while alive. There’s new underwear, even a towel, a comb and soap for them to be washed in death.” Margareta was struck by how matter-of-fact the women were. Preparing clothes for death seemed as inevitable to them as death itself.
“I had a responsibility to handle it sensitively,” says Margareta. “As a photographer you always feel like you’re intruding – photography is intrusive, full stop – so you go about it as ethically as you can.
“The fact that it wasn’t taboo made my job easier, but it’s incredibly personal. I had to gain their trust. Before taking the photographs. I interviewed them and tried to gauge their attitude towards death, but mostly they spoke of it in practical terms.
“I thought of photographing the women and clothes separately, but decided instead to photograph them with their clothes on display. Photographing them at eye-level made it less intrusive.”
The women revealed experiences of war as they spent time with Margareta. “One woman had come as a refugee to Banja Luka. She’d fled her home – and one of the first things she’d packed were her clothes for death,” she says. While Clothes For Death captures older women facing their final journey, Graduation Dresses depicts teenage girls on the brink of womanhood.
What connects the photographs is the insight they offer into the lives of women whose identities have been shaped by turbulent historical, political and cultural currents.
“They had lived through several different political and economic systems; I was interested in how that affected their lives,” says Margareta. “Even the young women remembered the war. “I left Bosnia when I was 17. When I returned I felt re-connected to the country, but was shocked by how much it had changed. It’s still recovering from the war and is very divisive.
“There’s a lot of poverty, but also a rising nouveau-riche. People drive 4x4s and seem to have become very materialistic.”
The girls, who were the same age as Margareta when she fled the war, were photographed wearing graduation dresses made by her mother. “They bring images from fashion magazines and the internet, showing celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Keira Knightley, and ask for dresses in the same style,” she says. “The new capitalism and consumerism has influenced how these girls see themselves. The internet has been another huge influence.
“Yugoslavia was always more Westernised than other Balkan states – when I was their age I was into Dynasty – but now girls are influenced by celebrities.”
Margareta was surprised by the revealing outfits the girls wore. “They’re photographed with their mothers and grandmothers. Their families just accepted it – that was one of the changes I noticed.”
The high school prom trend that’s hit Britain in recent years – with stretch limos squeezing into suburban cul-de-sacs to pick up dolled-up teenagers – hasn’t hit Bosnia yet, but Margareta says the graduation ceremony is quite a ritual.
“The whole family gets involved. Everyone meets in Banja Luka town square and the young people walk in a procession to the ball,” she says. “It’s a public performance resembling Hollywood film premieres or the Oscars red carpet.”
Who knows – when these young women are at the age when they’re preparing clothes for death, they may choose to be buried in their sparkly J-Lo dresses…
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