What is New Mourning Photography?
That's a good question!
Angela Jane’s New Mourning Photography changes lenses to share a new perspective on grief. If you share with Angela Jane an item that reminds you of your loved one, Angela Jane will share a unique perspective of them with you through New Mourning Photography.
Angela Jane will take the item you provide on a New Mourning photographic journey. Where the two of them go and what they see is a mystery solved only after Angela Jane receives the item. Following her heart, Angela Jane embraces the item and asks where they should go. The item's joyous New Mourning journey usually involves communing with nature.
Your loved one's item will be returned to you soon after completing its New Mourning journey. You will also receive digital images that capture that New Mourning journey. You may then choose to purchase prints or other photo products that will be healing, loving and/or joyful reminders of your loved one.
How did New Mourning begin?
A Confluence of Events
My first memory of death comes from my 10th birthday. My great-grandmother’s funeral was on the day I turned 10. I was a quiet and shy little girl, so I received $1.25 from two great-uncles who rewarded me for being so well-behaved at a funeral on my birthday. This was my first and experience although I didn’t recognize it as such then. I see now what I experienced then: I could celebrate life and mourn death on the same day, in the same moment.
A second heart-wrenching loss occurred when I was 14 and our puppy died after having been hit by a car. I wrote an essay for school about “The Day It Happened,” and the teacher shared the essay with the whole class – another and experience. I was deeply saddened by the death of our puppy and simultaneously proud of my writing.
Then, throughout the intervening years, I experienced losses of different kinds: relationship endings including a divorce and work endings including a firing. Along with these losses, though, came the ands. I learned that I was strong, compassionate, intuitive, independent yet connected, loving, and open-hearted. I found ease of being no matter the circumstances outside of this physical body I call home here on earth.
All of these and more built up to my experiences in 2021. I’m going to call 2021 out for being the hardest year I have ever lived – filled with chaos and loss and love and laughs. The 2021 details are for another time; however, the culmination of the year of chaos that was 2021 was the death of my mother, who died after decades of suffering the pain of osteoporosis. Fortuitously, I ended up with a pair of her signature heart-shaped glasses. After she died, I took them with me on my photographic wonder hunts, and Angela Jane's New Mourning Photography became a glimmer of light.
The year following my mother’s death was filled with friends who experienced their own great losses – of sons too young for death and of mothers too suffering to survive. From our losses and from my life-long avocation comes Angela Jane’s New Mourning Photography, shining light on grief.
Angela Jane’s New Mourning Photography celebrates life and acknowledges grief by creating divinely inspired photographs in memory of loved ones because everyone deserves to honor their loved ones in unique ways that bring comfort and joy.