Photography and Afterlives: Essays on photography, mourning and the politics of death in the 21st century.

This paper explores how the practice of taking post-mortem photographs in the UK serves as a mechanism which provides significance and meaning to those who have experienced the loss of a family member. The image of the death photo transitions from being a tangible relic, functioning as a pivotal reference point to chronicle the moment of death, to providing evolving narratives where acts of shared experience can be commemorated. The death photograph, an image taken after life, found acceptance as a prevalent photographic practice in the late 19th Century where members of Victorian society frequently engaged in post-mortem photography as a method of recollection and an act of mourning for their departed family members (Linkman 2003). Despite its historical prevalence, the death photograph remains a discreet and private reaction to loss which is constrained by social taboos surrounding images of the dead body. These contemporary acts of capturing such images are tainted with an inherent discomfort and unease, and a secrecy surrounds their existence, in that they are not displayed or incorporated into living society.

Through ethnographic interviews and observations conducted among hospice staff and bereaved individuals, this paper will argue that the boundaries of this social taboo are beginning to be challenged. The practice of death photography is emerging as a form of photography that represents social change in how we approach the subject. Furthermore, the act of photographing the dead is emerging, or reclaiming, elements of ritual which are shaping new social behaviours in the UK, that define how we interact with the dead.