Photography and Death

Description

The idea of photographing the dead is as old as photography itself. For the most part, early death photographs were commissioned or taken by relatives of the deceased and preserved in the home as part of the family photograph collection. Once thought inappropriate and macabre, today these photographs are considered beneficial in dealing with bereavement. Photography and Death reveals the beauty, meaning and significance of images once dismissed as disturbing, perverted or grotesque by placing them within the context of changing cultural attitudes towards death and loss.

Audrey Linkman is Visual Resources Manager at the Arts Faculty, The Open University. She specializes in the social history of nineteenth-century British photography and is the author of The Victorians: Photographic Portraits (1993).