19-07-2025
Funeral photography allows people to grieve and honour loved ones
Most people's smartphones and social media accounts are filled with happy snaps of birthdays, weddings, family gatherings and holidays.
But it's much less common for someone to pull out their phone or hire a professional to take photos at a funeral.
This story contains an image of a deceased child in a casket from 1935.
Warrnambool-based photographer Eddie Guerrero decided to expand his business into the area of funeral photography after receiving requests for casket photos.
He is now a member of the small funeral photography industry, but says it's not a service for everyone.
"Usually when you are doing photos, you are doing photos of happy events like the first day of school, graduation … sports events, but the funerals are pure emotions," he said.
"My intention is to do photos in a respectful way.
"That's my job — tell that story, share with the family, and then when they are ready, they can look back on that day."
John Leha lost his mother in March, on his 40th birthday.
The Birri Gubba, Wakka Wakka and Tongan man had never heard of funeral photography until he saw an example book advertised by a funeral parlour.
"I just thought it was so beautiful and so moving," he said.
"I wanted to be able to capture the emotions and the feelings, and for it to really honour … the memory of my mother in the emotions that were expressed by the mourners."
He said the resulting book helped to start conversations about his mother and provided a record of family ties as a reference for future generations.
"[It's] much like a tombstone in that you have the person's name, their children, and you try to capture the relationship they've had," he said.
Sydney-based photographer John Slaytor says certain cultures are more open to funeral photography and acknowledge that grief is an ongoing process.
"I think Anglo-Saxons are the worst [at processing grief]. I mean, they have the funeral and that's it," he said.
"There's no opportunity to sort of go back and deal with the grief afterwards, and I think … we need to think a lot harder about that."
Mr Slaytor has been focused on funeral photography and portraiture since 2009, and hopes his work gives an opportunity to "allow the grief to surface".
"I just like humans being gentle with each other, and that's in abundance at funerals," he said.
"Weddings in my experience are about consumption, and so I find that offensive.
Mr Slaytor photographed Mr Leha's mother's funeral, and some of his work is in a collection at the State Library of New South Wales.
The collection also includes photographs from public funerals of celebrities and politicians.
But of the 2 million photographs in the collection, only a tiny fraction feature private funerals.
In Victorian times, Mr Barker says the focus was on open caskets and still photographs indoors, due to the cumbersome nature of the equipment.
"Because John Slaytor has that intimate relationship with the families … you kind of get a feeling of the emotions and what's going on in the funeral, as opposed to the early [historical] photos which often feel a bit distant," Mr Barker said.
Michelle Bova has been in the funeral photography industry for 15 years, and has grown her business from a solo enterprise to more than a dozen staff.
She says funeral photography remains a small part of the business, even after the COVID-19 pandemic normalised live-streaming and videography.
"It's a smaller field, though it's always been there," she said.
She sees people turning to funeral photography as a way to preserve memories for younger generations.
"Families are so stressed leading up to the day, there's a lot they don't remember," she said.
