Click on the following link to see some of the portraits: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/portraits/index.html
Miller believes that the Portraits’ appeal is as a "snapshot of lives interrupted as they were being actively lived, rather than in the traditional obituary form."(114) As we can see from the two photographs below, an obituary is rather plain and states the facts and barely anything more. There is barely a story; a name, age, names of survivors etc...are given but nothing much more than that. The exception in this case is if the person represented in an obituary is young, where as Miller says, there lives were interrupted, cut too short. We do not observe that in most older people’s obituaries. So a portrait differs in that it includes a photograph but also an anecdote which according to Miller, is able to carry both life and death, past and present. It is a way of "representing what makes an individual life a life, [which simple words are often] unable to convey its emotional truth."(115)
Source:http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIoz94tjkY7omw0ypizON8nltTyKMtwFlhziBV2Z6SrLIyp-Wo_S9QBj9tGqtgvO8L_5t_H3ZTd9U8cKw3HW78khtFZIjtBOPMGzcASvN5125WO5h4hyphenhyphenlp1-YGQ0gSgZt_nfagFk269ui_/s400/pog_430_749.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.timreilly.com/2001/11/new-york-times-portraits-of-grief.html&h=400&w=230&sz=24&hl=en&start=4&tbnid=2qFhrM4ZkkDmVM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=71&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dportraits%2Bof%2Bgrief%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den
A portrait is meant to or often represents something good. I found it interesting when she stated that the "desirable anecdote for the Portraits of Grief we might say is narrative DNA. The DNA opens the lock of identity, if only we supply the right "reference sample"."(116) If only we supply the right reference sample? I feel as though this statement implies that by providing chosen and specific information or narrating that person’s identity we are not being entirely truthful. Is does not bring the essence of who that person might have been but only what we want to remember or others to remember them by. Should we believe that portraits and anecdotes tell the whole truth? Is there something left unsaid? I believe so. I agree when she argues that "details provide not so much the "whole truth" that we swear by in court, but the partial, emotional, perhaps literary, truth of what makes the person you love special to you." I wonder why we care so much about how our loved one are represented whether after death or still living. What is important is how you see them and how their identity appreciated by you. Only you can only truly know what that person was or is about. It’s not a few paragraphs listing all their good qualities and a smiling picture of them that will reveal their true and essential identity. However, I do see the significance of using such methods to remember and deal with loss.
In a sense, as Miller explains, we focus on the small happy things to deal with the BIG loss that comes with death because it is not as difficult to cope if the remembrance is done is small steps and fragments.: In the case of 9/11 it was fitting to remember the small details as a way of situating the loss within a bigger loss. The nation was in mourning and feeling a great loss. In choosing to remember the individuals and the telling details of their lives, it without a doubt must have make the grieving process easier.
Finally, Miller states that the codes of idealization in the Portraits of Grief make the expression of certain kinds of feelings taboo in the public domain."(121) I think that by making those portraits so public, it almost ends up taking away all the negative things you could remember about a person or persons. "Photographs also become portals to speak to the dead, (...) when survivors convert the images into texts, they bring their personal grief into the open and create new narratives.
I believe that we only remember good memories and choose to remember that way. But what if we also remembered the flaws in those portraits? Would that change the feelings or the process of dealing with loss and grief? "Is the suppression of ambivalence in the portraits and comparable forums - along with other emotions tinged with negativity, like anger and resentment - really the best way to carry out and represent the process of memorialization?" Like we discussed in class last week, we choose to repress some memories or your unconscious does it for you in order to protect you. But choosing to repress them might also be a way to follow the normative discourse that has been built around processes of grieving and acknowledging loss. I have a problem with that. I honestly think that we should be able to represent, remember those we have lost in an honest way, true their identity and not by a mere single moment captured in one photograph or anecdote. Whether that is possible in the broader context of society, that’s a whole other ball game.
