"First, we will die. Then we will be forgotten." | Photographer Balder Olrik | Louisiana Channel 

Yes.

Given the abrasive nature of humanity,quite hard to live up to.

i'm fine with being forgotten. future generations shouldn't need to learn lots of crazy facts about previous generations to live and experience life. if i can leave some amusing and interesting things behind anonymously would be a success in my book.

not sure about the last line

@@rajathrs650 so childish

@@itzelouise8714 I am 14 years old, may be I don't know, something which you know

@@rajathrs650 Something you do know, obviously, is to be humble and open. And that's already more then many will ever be able to learn! Maybe something deep to grasp with this video, is to come to realize that the need we have to preserve our identity thru time (thru memory that others have of us), comes from an illusion. The illusion of mind made identity. Meditation can lead to that kind of knowing. And strangely enough, it's when we realize that we are nothing, that real love manifests thru us (but the video didn't talk about this last part!). Take care!

@@itzelouise8714 ?

so true thank you for this comment

What was your work in the cemetery? I lived in Seattle for years and used to always take walks in the cemetery lawns. Some of the most beautiful and quiet places you can be.

@@taylorteachworth2540 My work "is" everything outside, I work there currently. Digging graves, burying the dead, placing headstones, trimming the headstones/mowing, raking leaves, etc... etc..

@@wheninroamful And so they remembered, or their grave is cared for. The saddest thing to me is to hear of or see pictures of a forgotten cemetery where tombstones are buried deep in vegetation and hidden under brush. I found a book one time about an old slave cemetery where the original wooden markers were gone except for a few hand craved stones. Indescribably sad!

@@dustydesert1674One day in downtown Hartford CT, we sat among the stones in a 17th century graveyard, reading their hilarious verses, with the towers of the modern city looming all around. The cream of the jest was that the stones had been moved in the interest of urban renovation, and although their order and placement had been meticulously observed, nothing, after all, remained below. Sort of ties in with the theme of this video.

Hi Roxann. Your comment touched me. I live in Northern Ireland and can relate to what you say. Here, we have separate cemeteries rather than divided. All my parents, siblings and almost all uncles and aunts are gone and it's sobering to realise that you are almost the end of the line. Focus on the living, like your daughters and try to live on in their memories.

@@johndwilliams yes, it is a poignant meditation. wishing you well.

Sad though true, the last few years of my father’s life where in a nursing home and there where many residents there seemed starved for attention.

Hang in there ☺️ our mental state of mind is very important to our health , hopefully you're doing everything you can that's on your end like eating healthy and living stress free.

@@MrWiseinheart Very true, Cancer is fighting me, not I it. All I do is turn up for treatment when called and let the medics worry rather than me😉

I’m sorry you had to go through your illness but I’m glad you have come to this profound truth with your humanity intact.

@@andrewrea2799 How did you get "illness" out of this comment?

Freud would say that the need to feel relevant is 100% ego-driven. His theories do explain a lot about human behavior.

@@MicheleEngel Frankl would say it is a very effective survival mechanism.

@@deepashtray5605Of course! I was not using "ego-driven" in a pejorative sense. Nor did Freud, I believe; he "discovered" and described a compelling psychological construct that clearly acknowledges--and even embraces--our survival instincts. We only get into trouble when the ego has run amok. A healthy ego is absolutely necessary for self-realization (as Maslow might assert).

Yes, I found that to hear someone talking abiut real things is comforting. It sudddenly changed my attitude to You tube and the Net

But Gears are also real

That is so true.

@@1961UK Mathew 6:5.

Good one, Joe.

As long as we know all this is temporary. We're never forgotten.

We exist in cosmic time. It should not be of any concern that eventually we leave no impression after we die. Death is a concept with no meaning after the event or to quote an artist much concerned with 'death' as a concept was Andy Warhol who stated that he didn't believe in it since you are not around to know it's happened. This photographer is primarily underlining the fact that our ego refuses certain facts about existence but uses a 'sledgehammer' (camera) to emote the obvious. Trawling a cemetery must surely be a singular intimate experience in terms of connecting with one's mortality but its surely a rather obvious one. This photographer assumes that it is his power as a photographer to reveal the intimacy of such an encounter to others (for their benefit) when there is ample evidence all around us to attest to the fact of our ephemeral lives. For that reason I find his work morbid and uninteresting. Much better to read Proust (who is buried where the artist visits and his character Mm Charlus who is, as you so importantly say, a 'forgotten one' before he dies. In the visual arts I would refer to the Japanese artist On Kawara for his work "One Million Years (Past) "For those who have lived and died" and "One Million Years" (Future) "For the last one" along with his famous date paintings ('Today' series) Both these artists take a poetic stance rather than relying on a 'readymade' constructed aesthetics of sorrow to affect the viewer or reader.

....or Samual Beckett (who is also buried in the cemetery the photographer visits) who stated:"Its not enough that we must die, we must be forgotten")

@@neilmurphy7554 I am Japanese and i wrote this to this photographer. Sorry i was a little less kind than you are, but he really infuriated me ! First of all if you were sick for a year and were still able to get a flat in one of the most expensive area of Paris if not the world then you are filthy rich because most people who are sick for a year even in france with one of the best social cover in the world. would still lose their job, lose their house and get dirt broke and could never recover and get a place near Pere Lachaise (and i know i lived in paris long enough). So sorry but i struggle to see the struggle you went through. No we are not all equal in front sickness and you were clearly privileged. Second of all, why are you so obsessed with death as a negative part of life. Here in Asia we see a cemetery with spider webs and dries flowers and tombstones covered in moss and we just think, this is beautiful and natural and the logical way things are. Nothing sad, nothing hard, nothing depressing. Third of all, why do you think you should not be forgotten. What is so special about you that it should be remembered for generations to come or forever. What makes you believe that your life, our lives are so superior or important. You eat meat every day i am sure and you don't care at all about the lives you took. You are completely fine with the agony in which those lives were spent and ended, and yet you expect the world to feel different about you. How insanely self-righteous, self-indulgent and hypocritical and arrogant of you ! You say your friends go hiking without you or go drinking without you because you are sick. But what do you expect, them to drag you to the mountains or add alcohol to to your antibiotics ? Do you even hear yourself talking. You are just sad because their lives went on and yours didn't but what would have you done if they were the sick ones and you were the healthy one ? Would you stop hiking, stop enjoying life because someone else can't. And is this just based on the fact that they are your friends ? Because then again there are millions of people who are sick and unable to enjoy life right now, but do you stop living because of them ? No, what bugs you is that YOU were not able to do those things, that YOU were going to be forgotten, not your friends, not the other sick people, not the animals you eat, screw them, but god forbids YOU suffer or get forgotten ! You say "leave some mark and make the world a better place when we leave it" but what was your mark and how di you contribute to make the world a better place. You think eating animals is a way to make the world a better place. You talk about having children but if you raise children to be as egocentric and self-indulgent and self-righteous as you, how is this making the world a better place ? Then you go and take pictures or other people's final resting place. You don't do it in a contemplative way, you do it in a professional way, with the ulterior motive to expose (exhibit) these places, without the consent of the dead or their remaining descendants. You go as far as taking photos from inside Mausoleums after wiping the glass clean to further intrude into a person or a family's resting place. How is that better than looting the resting place of the ancient egyptians, as so many europeans did. You think you are doing an anthropological or ethnological or even archaeological job, but what is the difference between these three and looting or desecrating ? If i go to your apartment and take photos of in, inside and out by putting my camera to your window and then publishing it, how is that acceptable. And what makes it more acceptable about doing it to a dead person and his/her final resting place. How about wanting to be forgotten or at least to be given peace after death and not become the topic of a photographer. You are ALL ego ! And in the worst possible way.

@@kachi2782 You’re mean son of a bitch! I have now forgotten you even lived.

@@dustydesert1674 Memento mori.

It occurred to me, watching this, that he likely doesn't have children. Like me I suppose. Circumstances…

@John Williams i truly concur we are hardwired for families i did not discover this until i had my kids all of my "success" amount to zero compared to the truly unconditional love i feel for my kids i am an angry self aborbed person yet my daughter never once got me angry until she was in her mid teens ... so rare i can count on fingers of one hand (my son got me going way before his teens ... haha) its something so profound its interesting that its so easy to reflect on all the wasted time spent & all the mistakes we made i feel a sense of regret if my life were to end but when i think of my kids i don't have any sense of wasted time nor the sense of mistakes made mistakes were made, but some how my attitude towards those mistakes are more forgiving ... so cliche ... but nothing beats ones flesh & blood ... its evolutionary-hardwired in us, that's how we got here as a species .

It' so immoral having children for those reasons. Selfish and cowardly, too.

@@littleafterall Immoral? No one goes through parenthood so they’ll be remembered! How simple & shallow you judge them to be. That’s such an arrogant attitude of superiority.

@@dustydesert1674 "Better Never to Have Been". I came to those conclusions years before I've read Benetar's book. Try reading it rational, without prejudices.

They shall pas as well.

Quite lecturing. You are forgotten.

I agree totally.

If you click on *Show more* in the video description panel, the music is listed there.

@@stephen_mcateer thank you SO much for that hint. I don't know how I missed it the first time around.