         Dr. Frank Brennan is a palliative care physician based in Sydney. Dr. Brennan was invited to open the Reveries: Photography and Mortality exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Old Parliament House, on Friday 11th May 2007. "Cardinal Basil Hume was once the headmaster of a school in England. On one occasion, when asked his main aim in educating the boys, replied: ';To prepare them for death'. That stark answer raises a fact that is at once known but not dwelt upon in our society - that we all live and we all die. We trust in medical advances, we seek and often find solutions for illness, but deep in our souls we know we are mortal, that all of our life is spent preparing for death. Of course it raises another issue - how we live our lives, what meaning we find in them, what opportunities we take, what relationships become precious. And when my patients are becoming iller it is that sense of themselves that I repeatedly remind them to nourish, reflect upon, treasure. Serious illness strips so much away. A sense of control, for now everything seems out of control ; independence, for now you are becoming more dependent on others ; the future because now the future may be much more finite than you ever expected and a sense of your body, for now you may be rapidly losing weight, troubled by pain and other symptoms. The photographs of this exhibition capture many of these things. And not only the bodily changes of thinness, dependence, illness. That they do. But they do much more. They also convey the challenges of maintaining dignity, preserving a sense of meaning. As I say to so many of my patients: "this disease has taken so much from you and sadly will continue to do so, but it can never take away your spirit, who you are." All of us are unique. All are precious. And at any age. Whether we are barely born or very aged. We are great for saying 'Well he'd had a good innings' or 'It must have been a blessing at her age' but that doesn't tell the truth of the matter. Simone de Beauvoir, reflecting on the illness and death of her mother, wrote: 'I did not understand that one might sincerely weep for a relative, a grandfather aged seventy or more. If I met a woman of fifty overcome with sadness because she had just lost her mother, I thought her neurotic: we are all mortal; at eighty you are quite old enough to be one of the dead. But it is not true. You do not die from being born, nor from having lived, nor from old age. You die from something. The knowledge that because of her age my mother's life must soon come to an end did not lessen the horrible surprise... it is as violent and unforeseen as an engine stopping in the middle of the sky... There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation'. It is co-incident but apt that these photographs are being displayed in this place because here lay in state the bodies of two of Australia's most admired leaders, John Curtin and Ben Chifley. The photographs of those occasions, widely seen, became part of the national grieving. And so I congratulate the Australian National Portrait Gallery for mounting this exhibition; Andrew Sayers, its Director and, in particular Helen Ennis, for the sensitivity and scholarship she has brought to curating the exhibition and writing its impressive commentary. I congratulate each photographer. It is right that such an exhibition is held. The photographs are at once technically excellent, moving and challenging, open and defying. Reflect upon these images. Allow them to resonate. Think of the eye and the spirit of each photographer as well as their subjects. There is, of course, a paradox here. Life is temporary, photographs are permanent. So many people photographed are gone but their images endure. Photography inhabits this paradox. It is of the moment, clearly, but it lingers on and resonates again and again in the viewer. All of these images are of people who have called the world into question. Whether a new born baby or the house of a loved parent. In the multitude of legacies that their subjects leave, there are these images. I am honoured to be asked to speak to you. I officially launch this exhibition. Thank you. " Frank Brennan
|
||
 |
 |
 |
