Spring Hurlbut 

Deuil

Spring Hurlbut’s photographic series Deuil (mourning), invites the viewer to contemplate life’s impermanence and find meaning in death and loss. Hurlbut’s images depict the cremated remains of humans and domestic animals entrusted to the artist by their loved ones. For some ­photographs the artist has used a scientific approach to quantify and measure the ­cremated remains ; in others she has scattered the ashes over a dark surface in a way that evokes the cosmos. At once, Hurlbut’s “portraits” capture the physical remnants of her subjects and that which transcends the merely physical. These works are both testaments to the particularity of their subjects and reminders of what the loss of each has in common: the inevitability and universality of the experience of death.