This photographic exhibition reflects on the death of a husband and wife through the use of lullaby, vintage photographs and life-size deathbed portraiture. Little Lady /Little Man not only acknowledges the dichotomy of life’s seemingly simultaneous endurance and fragility, but also challenges the viewer to consider concepts surrounding their own mortality.
“Little Lady / Little Man” is inspiredby two lullabies sung to the children in my family by my grandfather who recorded them secretly before his death. “Little Lady Make Believe” and “Little Man You’ve Had a Busy Day” are the two songs he deemed important enough to leave behind. Over time, these songs served for me as a beautiful, albeit tragic, metaphor for the fleeting nature of physical power and youthful beauty, conventions that society closely relates to concepts of masculinity and femininity. With my grandparents representing the archetypes of male and female, the life-size documentation of their final days mirrors the surrender we will all inevitably face.
Marjorie Ann Cory, 1934. © Estate of Yousuf Karsh.
The Last Breath, 2012, 46 x 28 inches, UV ink on aluminum
Marjorie Ann Merrill, Davidson Quebec
The Deathbed, 2012, 46 x 28 inches, UV ink on aluminum
So That It Won't Be Forgotten (Tryptic), 2012, 84 x 162 inches, UV ink on aluminum
Rest Your Heart, 2012, 46 x 45 inches, UV ink on aluminum
Rest Your Legs, 2012, 46 x 45 inches, UV ink on aluminum
Rest Your Head, 2012, 46 x 45 inches, UV ink on aluminum
Karsh-Masson Gallery, Ottawa ON
LittleLady / Little Man is an exhibition reflecting on the deaths of a husband and wife through the use of lullaby, vintage photographs and life-size deathbed portraiture. The exhibition acknowledges the dichotomy of life’s seemingly simultaneous endurance and fragility, and challenges viewers to consider concepts surrounding their own mortality.
Little Lady / Little Man is inspired by two lullabies sung to the children in my family by my grandfather who recorded them secretly before his death. Little Lady Make Believe and Little Man You’ve Had a Busy Day are the two songs he deemed important enough to leave behind. Over time, these songs served for me as a beautiful, albeit tragic, metaphor for the fleeting nature of physical power and youthful beauty, conventions that society closely relates to concepts of masculinity and femininity. With my grandparents representing the archetypes of male and female, the life-size documentation of their final days mirrors the surrender we will all inevitably face.
The images of my grandfather represent a relinquishment of the physical. As the layers of his clothes are removed, the viewer is able to see how time has ravaged his body. The scars and wrinkles are not strictly evidence of man’s physical fragility; they are a contradictory testament to our physiological ability to endure.
The photographs of my grandmother reference our fleeting beauty. A combination of vintage images captured during the height of her magnificence, including three portraits taken by Ottawa’s master photographer Yousuf Karsh, contrast with images taken in her final hours. A found photograph of my grandmother as a bathing beauty sprawled across the sand echoes a contemporary life-size image of her lying on her deathbed, clinging to life. Gallery visitors are permitted to peer over her bedside and observe her as I did, just hours before her death. She is frail. The photograph renders her lifeless, freezing her last moments in time. Similar to the post-mortem daguerreotype photographs of the Victorian era, this image was created in memoriam but free from the confines that had traditionally kept the nineteenth-century images in miniature scale. The delicate skin of my subject is presented in true-to-life size enabling the metallic surface of the polished aluminum to imply a mirror, a reflection of things to come.
-Jonathan Hobin
In 1941, two historic Canadian families were united when William Horace Merrill married his high school sweetheart, Marjorie Ann Cory. He was the son of National Canoe Champion, Ottawa Senator, Stanley Cup Winner and Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Horace Merrill. She was a beautiful three-time subject of famed Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh and granddaughter of the former Minister of the Interior and Commissioner of the North West Territories, William WallaceCory. Their love affair lasted more than 70 years before the death of William Merrill, affectionately known as Pop, on May 23, 2006. Marjorie Ann Merrill, also known as Grammie, died on January 27, 2010.