‘What really moves me is the fact that I’m capturing
When families flush with emotion gather in church for the ceremony, Brooklyn photographer Duane Knight is there to capture every moment — from the elaborate flower arrangements to the carefully chosen outfits.
While most such photographers are hired for weddings, Knight is using his talents as one of the country’s few professional funeral photographers.
“What really moves me is the fact that I’m capturing these special moments that otherwise would be lost,” Knight, 60, says.
He first got the unorthodox idea in 2010, when he volunteered to photograph his uncle’s funeral. His widowed aunt was so distraught she didn’t remember even seeing many of the mourners who showed up to pay their respects.
What she forgot, brought back to her.
“That clicked a light bulb in my head,” Knight says. “If she doesn’t remember what went on at the funeral, how many other people who sit in that front row don’t remember?”
Helynn Boughner, 47, never envisioned hiring a funeral photographer. But when her father died in 2017 she remembered a chance meeting with Knight two years earlier.
“It was a little morbid for me,” Boughner, a Westchester County real estate agent, said of her first encounter with Knight at a business expo. “I purposely walked past his booth when I saw the sign ‘Funeral Photography.’ But I quickly circled back to speak with him out of curiosity.”
Boughner turned to Knight when she held an open casket funeral for her dad that drew about 100 mournal his photos ers to Lawrence H. Woodward funerhome in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“Friends told me that this was the first funeral they ever attended with a photographer,” Boughner recalled. “But no one objected to having their picture taken. They even posed for group shots.”
Boughner says seeing her father in his casket was “one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do in my life.”
“I was not prepared to say goodbye,” she added.
The photos later helped her through the grieving process. “It was like I got a chance to relive the experience,” she said.
Cassandra Lane, 50, hired Knight to shoot her husband’s funeral in 2015 at the suggestion of a funeral director at Sampson Funeral Home in East New York.
She was barely aware of Knight’s presence during the service, only realizing after seeing the photos that he had stealthily climbed a balcony to capture images of the family in the pews, the choir, the casket, and finally the speakers on the pulpit.
“He captured tears coming down my face,” Lane said. “Tears I didn’t know was there.”
A photograph of her husband in his casket was among the shots she received from Knight.
“It was difficult viewing him at first,” she said of the image. “It’s always difficult to lose a loved one.”
Knight typically shoots the body at a funeral and leaves it up the family if they want to have those photos in the memory book he produces for them.
“Some do want it, some don’t,” Knight said. “Me personally, I’m OK with it. I believe in life after death. It’s not the end, just a transition.”
Through his work, Knight, a married father of three who lives in Brownsville, realized funerals draw