Digital Photography and Everyday Life

4 Illness, death and grief

The daily experience of viewing and sharing digital images

Rebeca Pardo and Montse Morcate

 

 

 

Introduction

The representation of grief, illness and death had an important photographic presence in America and Europe in the nineteenth century (Linkman 2011). Extensive research has been conducted, particularly on its presence in Western culture and the Victorian era, where the act of photographing the dying and the dead became one of the key elements of the mourning rituals, especially through post-mortem photography (Burns 1990; Ruby 1999; Batchen 2004). This practice continued throughout the twentieth century in many countries, merging with the various cultural idiosyncrasies involved and adapting itself with the ...