From Sculpture to Porcelain Funeral Photography: Symbolism, Collective Memory, and Public Space

Abstract

This article explores the evolution of media as instruments of collective memory and symbolic presence, focusing on the historical and technological transition from monumental funerary sculpture to porcelain photography. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines memory with art history and media theory, the article analyses how changes in materials and memory reflect transformations in the social perception of death, mourning, and immortality. Taking as a case study example from the global context throughout the centuries, but also the Albanian one during the 20th and 21st centuries, the article argues that photography on porcelain democratized visual memory, shifting the focus from the glorification of elite status through sculpture, towards the preservation of individual identity and family intimacy. Semiotic and iconographic analysis shows that the image that survives on the tombstone does not simply serve as a sign of the past, but as a "living media" that mediates the symbolic presence of the deceased in the public space of the cemetery, challenging forgetting and constantly reconstructing the cohesion of collective memory.