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Accepted Paper:
The dreaded selfie: photos of human remains in museums
Sarah Hiepler
(University of Aberdeen)
Based on interviews with my informants, there is an assumption among museum staff that visitor photography of publicly displayed human remains is disrespectful behaviour. Not all photography of human remains in museums carried this same moral weight.
Paper long abstract:
During my fieldwork in museums in the UK, I noticed many curators conveyed concerns around photography of the dead. There seemed to be an underlying assumption that visitor photography of publicly displayed human remains is disrespectful behaviour. Not all photography of human remains in museums carried this same moral weight. This paper attempts to unravel how some photography, depending on purpose and positionality of the photographer, is understood as disrespectful while other forms of photography, including X-rays, scans, online collection object photos, "expand our understanding of the world and our shared humanity." The main ethnographic examples cited will be pulled from interviews conducted at the Ashmolean Museum, the Oriental Museum, the Anatomical Museum and The Egypt Centre.