Family members mourn a 42-year-old mother who passed away due to a pulmonary disease. San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery, Iztapalapa, Mexico City. March 17, 2016.Sébastien Van Malleghem
In a city with close to 22 million people, where concrete has taken over, how do you handle your dead? It’s that question that drove photographer Sebastien van Malleghen to Mexico City earlier this year.
“Around 450 people die every single day in Mexico City,” says the Belgian photographer best known for his in-depth forays into the penitentiary and law enforcement worlds. “The cemeteries are just enormous, and I wanted to show what happens between the moment we die and the moment our bodies are buried in a megalopolis like Mexico City.”
The result is a series of raw and unflinching images that show not just death but also life—the life of the people who work in the shadow, preparing bodies for their final repose. “Their job is to clean the corpses, fix the muscles, remove the fat, erase all of these stigmas and then to apply make-up and dress them up,” says van Malleghen. “It’s very mechanic. [After a while] the corpses become simple objects to them.”
Some of his images are hard to look at, and that’s the point, says the photographer, who admits he wouldn’t have been able to get the same level of access back in his native Belgium. He believes that the tendency to become numb to fictional death on TV and in movies while turning away from real death—because “when you show what happens in real life, people think it’s too harsh, too raw”—is worth combating, even if it’s uncomfortable.
And Mexico is an appropriate place to do so. There, in his experience, death isn’t seen as the end. “It’s part of life, and the families’ strength in the face of death is incredible,” he says. “They believe that in order to surmount your pain, you have to feel it.”
The entrance of the Embalsamadoras Funeral Office in the Colonia Doctores neighborhood in Mexico City. It usually handles between three and 15 corpses a night. March 9, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemAdan works on a body inside the embalmer's office in Colonia Doctores, Mexico City. March 7, 2016Sébastien Van MalleghemEmbalmer's tools used to prepare the bodies. March 7, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA body is seen on the working table of the embalming office of the Grossman company. March 12, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA cross on a gallon of bleach. Bleach is used to clean the bodies. March 7, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemThe clothes of a deceased person are ready to be used. March 7, 2016.sebastien Van Malleghem—VAN MALLEGHEM sebastienArthuro, an employee of the Embalsamadores Funeral Office dresses up a body before putting it in a coffin. March 9, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA body is prepared and placed in a coffin. March 21, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA body is cremated. March 15, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA worker of the Pantheon San Nicolas de Tolentino puts the ashes of a deceased person in a grinder before presenting them to the family. March 15, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA young girl works as a secretary for the funeral company Grossman. While she watches the security cameras of the company, she also listens to the video clip of the American singer Fergie, who sings "Big Girls Don't Cry." March 13, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemView from the Colonia Alamos neighborhood. March 6, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA funeral worker rests as he consults his Facebook account on his phone. March 12, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemAn itinerant seller of coffins talks to an ambulance driver, gathering information about funerals stores in need of coffins. March 13, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemThe owner of a funeral flower store goes to the city's flower market twice a week with her daughter to buy Chrysantemum. March 08, 2016Sébastien Van MalleghemLocal families from the Itzapalapa neighborhood traditionally carry the coffin of the deceased through the streets of the village as a final goodbye. Itzapalapa, Mexico City. March 16, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemWild grass takes over a grave at the San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery in Mexico City. March 15, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA cemetery worker digs in a familial grave to exhume a corpse, under the watch of family members. After 21 years, coffins are considered obsolete. The family can decide to burn the remains and place them in a funeral urn, and keep the grave for another family member. San Nicolas Tolentino cemetery, Mexico City. March 15, 2016.sebastien Van Malleghem—VAN MALLEGHEM sebastienFamily members mourn a 42-year-old mother who passed away due to a pulmonary disease. San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery, Iztapalapa, Mexico City. March 17, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA funeral bus is seen at the San Nicolas Tolentino cemetery. For practical purposes, families and friends usually rent a bus to attend a funeral. March 17, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA family on a bus at the San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery. March 17, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA family gathers on the anniversary of the death of a woman at the San Nicolas Tolentino cemetery. March 20, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemFamily members mourn a 42-year-old mother who passed away due to a pulmonary disease. San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery, Iztapalapa, Mexico City. March 17, 2016.Sébastien Van MalleghemA view of the San Nicolas Tolentino cemetery. March 17, 2016.Sébastien Van Malleghem