A few months after my grandfather’s death I visited his grave and noticed several fresh graves on the cemetery. My attention was caught by the sticks with tape on them, marking space for a grave in the future. A person was still alive, but there was a place for him in the cemetery already. I started to investigate the matter and documented the tradition of preparing to one’s own death: sometimes people just buy a place on the cemetery, sometimes they put a blank gravestone or they may order a stone with their picture, name, and date of birth on it. There is a superstition about monuments to those who are still alive, that’s why some of the gravestones are hidden under non-transparent black envelopes. They are there and at the same time, they are not, since you can’t see them.





Pre-Mortem (2019). Ihar Hancharuk