Grafmonument van Cornelis en Johan Ockerse in de Sint-Adriaanskerk te Dreischor 1893

This is a photograph of the Grave Monument of Cornelis and Johan Ockerse in the Sint-Adriaanskerk in Dreischor. As a photograph of a built monument, we might see this image as documenting an institution as much as a work of art. The visual codes in the photo—such as the skulls and classically draped figures—speak to a northern European cultural context in which the memorialization of wealthy and powerful families was often staged within the space of the church itself. These monuments can be understood as physical assertions of social hierarchy, and in many cases they literally overshadow the spaces of communal worship. To understand this image fully, one would have to research not only the Ockerse family but also the institutional history of the church itself and the local community. Only through this kind of historical contextualization can the politics of this imagery become fully visible.