Question: is it "good" to show images of people near-death?
For example: a friend is dying in the hospital and several mutual friends start a Facebook group just to keep abreast of the daily status and offer help to the family and one another.
What if one of those friends takes a picture of the sick friend while visiting in the hospital, then posts that image on social media? (The sick friend is unresponsive, bloated, mouth agape, and lying crooked in bed...totally unaware of the camera or anyone/anything.) He cannot give consent in any way.
When my grandfather had a stroke in 2008, I rushed home to see him and be with family. I grabbed my camera and film, thinking I'd get some photos of him and the family, not knowing how my family would react. The day he took his last breath, I asked permission from my grandmother, aunts and uncles, to take some photos of Papaw in bed. It was incredibly difficult to press the shutter. It felt slightly obscene. I really was out of my depth, and looking back now I realize that the camera was just a shield for me. I was ashamed of myself for where I was in my life, and the camera was something to hide behind. I had the film developed later and I've kept the photos in my dresser all these years. They are surprisingly intimate, and quite good, if I may say so. But even still, I'll never show them to anyone.
All these years later, I don't know that I would take those photos again today. If I'm faced with saying goodbye to a loved one, I don't know that I'll pick up my camera...and I take my camera everywhere.
I'm not saying we shouldn't take any photos near the end, but I think they should be in context, and not simply to show how sick/thin/near-death the person is. A group photo with the person awake and alert? Sure. But unresponsive and crumpled up in the hospital bed? Why?
I think that if the person can't give consent, don't post the photo. If it serves no good, don't post it. If it will likely bring unnecessary sorrow to loved ones and family, DON'T post it.
Comments
But I'll agree that context is everything. It has a place... a place where the "sacredness"/sanctity of life is honored. And IMO, the internet/Social media can be rather "profane".
I suspect that this is because of the universality of capitalism with it's universal injunction to "enjoy". For this reason, "death" has been banished/repressed from the cultural conversation.
During the enlightenment, cultures banished the irrational and placed the "mad" in asylums. Today we banish "death" and place all aspects of it "off screen" ob-skena/ obscene. There is no longer any reverence in death (like Roman ancestor worship or Egyptian pharoah worship).
Death has no meaning today. The dead HAVE BEEN thrown out of our societies symbolic circulation. They are no longer being's with a role to play. Death has become simply a social line of demarcation separating the dead from the living. Death has become a statistic to be modelled in a simulation and avoided and used as a metric to judge the living (bureaucratic/governmental performance as part of a political narrative). The dead are no longer buried in the local churchyard, but exiled to cemetery ghettos on the fringes of the cities/suburbs or ossuaries under ground. As individuals, we no longer see the value of our deaths in terms of the collective (as Titus Andronicus viewed the honorable deaths of all his sons for Rome or "terrorists" who view death as a symbolic weapon) Suicide has become an unsignifiable "event" without economic value, but with immense "symbolic" value. The goal of the modern project has become the elimination/ annihilation of death itself. We've become Nietzsche's "man who lives the longest"... his "last man"... and we blink.
Tribe? Justice? Chivalry? Bushido? Morality? Family? Pleasure? Utility? Nothing?
Does my identity depend upon or require recognition from others, or am I okay with their misrecognition of my identity?
What makes a Morty?
I am SUCH a Mr. Poopybutthole. :(
And on the way our society views death ...I suppose when so many people have no belief in anything supernatural, we are left with terror at the thought of death. There are now "death-doulas", professionals who sit and guide the dying person and family through the process. Supposedly they are less medical than hospice, and add a sense of normality to the process. Years ago I would've thought this ridiculous, but not anymore.
In sitting with my dying friend this week, I was just quiet. I used to feel the need to talk and express my feelings to the dying. Not this time. I didn't want that time together to be about me. He knows how I feel about him. I thought he just needed a hand to hold. So I just held his hand.
I know that I don't know you IRL, but if you are a Mr. Poopybutthole, you're not alone in that. I think it's very human.
I'm really out of touch and I can't keep up!
I never understood what a "friend" was from reading Plato's "Lysis". Now I know what one is, someone who "enjoys" what I enjoy (w/minor differences) and whom I enjoy seeing enjoying. I don't "hate him" for "Stealing mine". I'm not jealous of his enjoyment. I'm "happy for him".
There is the thought that it is best to remember them in better health rather than being reminded they have gone.
I have taken several funeral-home photos, typically to show to family members and close friends who couldn't attend the funeral.
I can understand your attitude changes.
A lot of my attitudes about a lot of things changed during the 12.5 years I did caregiving for my husband. For example, I'm more and more aware that we have limited time on this earth.
To hell with the self-righteous busybodies who criticize(d) me for remarrying so soon. They are not living my life!
Wow, what a trip down memory lane...I clicked the link to Beak's blog. I didn't start blogging until 2007 but I can't believe this group of bloggers has known each other for so long.