A life takes longer than ninety seconds to show.

A ninety second montage holds about eighteen photographs. Eighty years of a life, eighteen photographs. It is over before the last row has sat down, and then the screen goes black for the next hour.

Ten to fourteen seconds a frame is the number. Long enough for a room to find the face, register who else is in the picture, and notice the kitchen it was taken in. Shorter than that and photographs get flicked past. Longer and the room starts waiting.

Ninety five frames at twelve seconds each runs nineteen minutes exactly. That is enough to divide a life into chapters: the childhood photographs there are only six of, the twenties, the wedding, the years with small children, the work years, the grandchildren, last summer. Each chapter gets its own run of frames, so the montage moves through time the way a person actually remembers it.

You can choose to have it endless. The last image becomes the first image, so it loops rather than ends, with no end card and no fade to black. It can be running as people come in, run through the service under whatever is being played or said, and still be running at the wake three hours later.