Smile Though Your Heart is Aching:

Forensic Gazes, Death and Smiling for a Photograph

A text by Xaver Könneker

This piece explores how visual artist Xaver Könneker, during his research into urban loneliness, uncovered a unique relationship between smiling for the camera, a Kodak in this case, and the forensic identification of the deceased. His original study, Kodak Knows No Dark Days: Forensic Gazes, Death and the Photographed Smile, was published in 2021 and inspired a multi-channel video installation in 2022. This installation interweaved an interview he conducted with a leading forensic odontologist (who preferred to remain anonymous) with archival Kodak advertisements, audio narration, 3D dental renders, 35mm dental slides, and 8mm film recordings.

Xaver Könneker is a visual artist, teacher, and researcher who merges cultural theory with photographic practice. His work frequently explores the intersections of mortality, identity, structures, and visual culture.

I first discovered the uncanny relationship between smiling for the camera and death while researching for a photographic project on urban loneliness. I came across a heart-wrenching case of a woman who lay dead unnoticed in a London council estate apartment for almost three years. The story caused understandable shock in the hearts and minds of the British press and public, prompting some soul-searching on the state of community in the country. How could this woman have died so alone in a densely populated estate surrounded by neighbours? Why did no one notice her absence earlier? Newspaper articles described how an automated payment system, acting on behalf of benefit agencies, continued to transfer half of her monthly rent to a housing trust, leading authorities to assume she was still alive. It somehow reminded me of the life support you find in hospitals, where machines keep a patient from dying. But in this scenario, the patient has already passed, and here, the machines maintain merely the semblance of life, the vital signs of the body, not the pulsations of a beating heart, but rather the periodic payment of rent due. As the payment system covered only half of her rent, the passage of time meant mounting debt. Over those three years, £2400 in unpaid rent accrued, which must have alarmed the housing trust. In January 2006, they sent bailiffs to repossess her belongings, only for them to discover her lifeless body in front of a running television broadcasting the BBC channel. Rattled by the harrowing details of urban loneliness laying bare a network of social relations stitched together by automation, alienation, and isolation—a particular line in an article fully caught my attention:

“The dead woman’s body was so badly decomposed, it could only be identified by comparing dental records with an old holiday photograph of her smiling.”

I was stunned by how the sentence positioned joy and sorrow in an unsettling proximity. Why would something as cheerful as a smile be useful for identifying a body? I asked myself, giving rise to a general curiosity about how we have all silently agreed to partake in the awkward ritual of smiling for the camera in the first place. A few internet searches later and

I was thrusted into the strange world of forensic odontology and Kodak.
Forensic odontology—the specialised field in forensics focusing on identifying deceased individuals through dental records—as demonstrated in the case of the London woman, unveils uncanny connections between identity, mortality, and the act of smiling for the camera. When faced with an unidentified body, forensic odontologists typically resort to dental records for identification. However, in the absence of such records, they turn to smiling photographs sourced from the personal archives of the deceased’s friends and family. In the context of forensic odontology, the smiles found in photographs at events such as weddings, holidays, and birthday parties take a rather macabre turn, as their forensic utility resides in the fact that they offer a glimpse of what lies beneath our skin. Smiling reveals our teeth, the only visible part of the skeleton while we are alive. As teeth are composed of enamel—which is the hardest substance in the human body—they are remarkably resistant to decomposition and damage. Therefore, a photograph of a smile exposing our dentition documents what remains of the body after death, making the expression of joy a vital source of forensic evidence. From photographs of smiles, the forensic odontologist extracts details such as dental angulations, positions, size, and anomalies, which are then compared to the dental remains of the unidentified body. If there is a match between the dentition in the photograph and the dental remains, the body’s identity is confirmed. The forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow, who famously worked on the skeletons of John F. Kennedy, Joseph Mengele, and Tutankhamun, called the process of identifying human remains ‘osteobiography’ or the biography of bones. He envisioned osteobiography as being the history of someone told by their skeleton. The bone within a living body is a very dynamic tissue moulded by a person’s life. Eyal Weizmann draws an evocative parallel between the skeleton and the photograph, stating that “The skeleton is not only an object to be photographed…but is itself a kind of a photograph, or a film, exposed to life as negatives are exposed to light in long, continuous exposure on a mutating and contracting frame.”

While teeth are distinct from bones, they can also be understood as repositories of the imprints of life on our bodies, holding to the trained eye a deep reservoir of information that can be called upon to reveal a multitude of information about a person. Our crooked teeth, the overbite we developed because we refused to wear our retainers as a teenager, the length and size of our canines and our molars, the gap between our teeth we self-consciously cover up with our hand when we laugh, the tooth that got chipped falling drunkenly off our bike; they all contribute to our uniqueness and in turn constitute our forensic identity. Much like fingerprints, our smiles reveal our identity.

It occurred to me that the forensic process of identifying corpses through photographs of smiles relies on the cultural obsession of having our photo archives filled with moments of joy. Without the abundance of smiling portraits to draw from, forensic odontologists might face more challenges in identifying deceased persons without dental records. The question of why we all agreed to partake in the awkward ritual of smiling for the camera in the first place was still lingering in my mind. From cosy family gatherings to sunny holidays in Spain, the expectation of smiling for photographs is nearly ubiquitous. We see the camera and smile as if it were a natural, biological instinct. The prevailing attitude in society presents happy moments as inherently impregnated with photogenic value. Within our family archives, there appears to be little space for anything other than emotional expressions signalling a happy life well spent. But what drives the cultural habit of smiling for the camera? Where are all the other emotions in our family archives? In her book ‘Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia’, cultural theorist Nancy West argues that we should view the performances of joy in photographs not as natural responses to the camera but rather as an orchestrated result of Kodak’s advertisement campaigns. She traces the history of The Eastman Kodak Company and the immense influence it exercised over the cultural habits surrounding photography. She writes:

Kodak taught amateur photographers to apprehend their experiences and memories as objects of nostalgia, for the easy availability of snapshots allowed people for the first time in history to arrange their lives in such a way that painful or unpleasant memories were systematically erased. Before Kodak burst upon the scene, Americans were much more willing to allow sorrow in the space of the domestic photograph.

Domestic photographs (snapshots taken within the context of a home or family setting ie. holidays, birthdays, family gatherings, etc.) have not always been dominated by expressions of joy. Delving into old daguerreotypes reveals a stark departure from smiles and joyful moments. Instead, the camera often encountered faces seemingly marked by grim suspicion, uncertain of the mystifying technology that seemed to freeze time. Before the advent of the snapshot, photographic encounters carried a sense of gravity, too solemn to be sullied by smiles. Mark Twain famously remarked, “I think a photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.” Early responses to photography are far removed from the contemporary urge to document displays of joy. In its heydays, the medium largely revolved around processing sorrow.

“Photography owes much of its early flourishing to death.” writes Nancy West. The phenomenon of post-mortem photography starkly reveals the intimate links between the origins of photography and death. Post-mortem photographs centred on loved ones who had recently deceased, documenting bodies ravaged by the cholera epidemic, dead children cradled in the loving arms of mothers, and the bodies of wives and husbands tucked gently in bed as if asleep. For Victorians, the cholera epidemic made the inevitability of death an undeniable truth.
A truth that structured all facets of life, framing the available interpretations of the medium’s affordances. The motionless state of the deceased proved to be an ideal subject for the daguerreotype, as the limitations of the technology often blurred the movements of life but could capture the stillness of death with utmost clarity. Analogous to a technological form of mummification, the long exposure time embalmed the still body with light, photographically preserving it from decomposition. In the mid-half of the 19th century, post-mortem photographs outnumbered photographs of marriages at a ratio of 3 to 1. People were more willing to spend $2 on a daguerreotype commemorating the passing of a loved one than on capturing a marriage or birth.  Photographs of deceased loved ones often took centre stage in Victorian households, with post-mortem photographs displayed in the living room, a tradition expressing a “…desire to keep the dead roaming comfortably among the living.” With this in mind, early responses to photography expressed a deeply rooted need to encompass the painful reality of death within the pictured narratives of people’s lives.

With advancements in medical sciences leading to a decline in infant mortality and disease, the immediate reality of death became more removed from everyday life. As societies grew increasingly alienated from death, with most interactions with the dying occurring within medical realms such as hospitals and care homes, the popularity of post-mortem photography began to diminish. But, contrary to popular belief, it was not naturally and immediately replaced by snapshots of happy moments and smiles. Christina Kotchemidova, a professor of Culture and Communication at Spring Hill College, argues that the photo-industrial giant Kodak played a fundamental role in severing the association between photography and mortality.  From the late 19th century until the early 20th century, Kodak’s power within the photography market grew exponentially.
By 1915, it had virtually monopolised the market, producing 90% of U.S. camera film and controlling, according to one estimation, 75% to 80% of the entire photography trade. In this monopolised landscape, Kodak established itself as the leading expert on photography, exercising immense influence over the conception of the medium and the cultural habits surrounding it.
 
Through widespread advertisement campaigns, instruction manuals, and workshops, the company ingrained into the minds of the public that photographic encounters were to be seen as sites of pleasure rather than sites of mourning. Kodak heavily borrowed from newly emerged advertising strategies, centring around the image of the happy and fulfilled individual, emancipated by acts of consumption. Thus, Kodak sold the idea of photography as an act to consume with pleasure. As a result, family archives began to increasingly resemble the commercial aesthetics of billboards rather than a medium to process grief. The smile became central to promoting the promise of pleasure. Through the mass-scale dissemination of photographic depictions of smiling individuals caught in leisurely moments, the company naturalised the association between the smile, leisure, and the photographic encounter, reflected in advertisement campaigns like ‘Vacation Days are Kodak Days’ which framed photography as an integral component of the holiday experience. Thus, in tandem with the circulation of these advertisements, the smile slowly shed its perceived foolishness and began to appear on our faces, eventually becoming a ritualistic component of the photographic habitus. The Eastman Kodak Company taught us how to smile and, in many ways, how to remember, transforming the ways we document, perform, and sequence our lives. As we have seen, the company constructed a paradigm of photographed memory in stark contrast to early responses with the medium, which expressed a deep-seated need to process, through the image, the inescapable reality of death. The same sentiment shared in the writings of Nancy West, who observed that:

Snapshooters generally use photography as a means of avoiding, indeed of denying, painful memories, including most notably the memory of a loved one’s death. They use photos as a means of reconstructing their histories into narratives of timeless pleasure and affection, thus striving to secure a future that will remain untouched by pain as it looks back on what seem to be moments that have somehow escaped sorrow and loss.The smile, no doubt, was a crucial collaborator in purging death from photographed memory. With the help of the smile, Kodak limited domestic photography to the confines of pleasure and nostalgia. The company taught its users to repress anxieties around their mortality by instructing them to smile and selectively remember their past in a way where pain is absent from the family archive. Campaign slogans like ‘Kodak Knows No Dark Days’ revealed this ambition to render the urge to capture emotions that deviate from joy as antithetical to the family archive. Yet, paradoxically, it is precisely due to this purge that our carefully compiled family archives of smiling faces now contain the forensic information needed to identify deceased persons. In this regard, the holiday photograph of the London woman smiling, used in the forensic identification of her remains, stands as a testament to the unforeseen consequences of Kodak’s cultural influence, but also the inescapable fact that, no matter how hard we try to suppress it, death finds a place within the frame of our lives.

I would like to conclude this essay by reflecting on the responsibility of tending to the dead. In many ways, I think of the work of the forensic odontologist as an innate recognition of the responsibility we all share among the living towards the deceased. Hans Ruin, a professor at Södertörn University, remarks that un-commemorated deaths, especially violent ones—deaths that lead to unmarked graves—ignite a certain collective anxiety within us, as they violate the deeply held principle that the dead and their continuation should be cared for. In this vein, while the odontologist’s approach to caring for the dead is forensic and emotionally detached, it is ultimately motivated by a profound sense of moral duty towards the dead. Why else would you willingly confront yourself with human remains? I view the work of the forensic odontologist as being deeply invested in preserving the dignity of the body of a stranger, their acts of identification preventing the fate of an anonymous burial. To bury someone’s body, knowing their full name, is to bury them with dignity. Yet, the work of the forensic odontologist does not only serve the dead but also cares for the living. The families of missing people often express the inability to move on without finding the body. In a state of ambiguous loss, where the likelihood of the death of their loved one stands in constant conflict with the hope that they might return, the body becomes vital in the promise of finding closure. By establishing the identity of the body of the loved one, the forensic odontologist allows the family to fully grieve for the first time. By opening the possibility to grieve, the process of forensically identifying a body becomes a compassionate act and a form of care. At this point, I would like to return to the smile. After all, it is the photograph of a smile that enables the forensic odontologist to identify those without dental records—through the teeth, revealed by the smile, the unidentified and deceased body re-acquires a name and a biography, and so the path to a dignified burial begins with a smile.