The First and the second death

The first death is when your body ceases to function. The second death is when you are placed in the ground. and the third and last is when none is left to remember you.  

This photography exhibit is based on the traditional understanding of the death of an individual. This happens in spaces dedicated to those who have departed and the living who wish to remember them. In traditional Mexican cemeteries, a wooden cross is placed with the name of the one who inhabits the space below. 

Nine months later, this cross is replaced by a permanent headstone or memorial stone with more complete information. Sometimes this memorial stone never arrives and the cross remains there until that space’s rental time expires. Then the remains are removed to make room for a new individual. 

The purpose of the Day of the Dead is to remember people who have died – relatives, friends, and even people whose names you can’t recall. The burial is considered the Second Death, the moment when life leaves your body is the first. The Day of the Dead helps every believer to remember those who have gone before them and guarantees that the individual will continue to occupy the cemetery’s earth. 

 If no one remembers that individual – if there is no living being who thinks of that person on the Day of the Dead, the departed must leave the cemetery and encounter the Third Death, the death that everyone fears the most. The Third Death means that the forgotten person is gone forever.   

 – This photographic exhibit includes an 
authentic forgotten crosses from cemeteries in Mexico.