Digital photographic legacies, mourning, and remembrance: looking through the eyes of the deceased

Abstract

This article examines how digital photographic legacies affect and shape mourning and remembrance. The research sample comprises 32 interviews with bereaved persons, two expert interviews, 500 photographs, 200 screenshots, and social media contents. The qualitative, empirical research utilises constructivist grounded theory. Research data were gathered through intensive media-elicitation interviews, researcher-generated photography, and extant data collection. The findings demonstrate the profound impact of digital photographic legacies on mourning and remembrance, and that creatively working with inherited photographs is an essential task in bereavement. Digital photographs left behind empower mourners to recall everyday life in rich detail, to recognise the personality of the deceased, to feel close, and to reconnect with them. Further, inherited photographs may alleviate grief by allowing mourners to experience missed periods of the deceased’s life, to learn about their hidden facets, to be reassured about their good life, to answer questions of why, guilt, and time in cases of suicide, and thus to reconstruct the deceased’s biography. The article advocates a refocusing of photography research on photography’s commemorative function. It suggests that bereavement researchers and counsellors could benefit from further exploration of digital photographic legacies for grief and through a consideration of advancing therapeutic grief techniques which utilise digital photographs.