Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America

Ruby, Jay

ISBN 10: 0262181649 / ISBN 13: 9780262181648

Published by The MIT Press, Cambridge, M.A., 1995

First edition, first printing hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, in very good condition. From the collection of Christopher Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at University College London, whose name is penned to FEP. Jacket is scuffed and edges are creased. Board corners and spine ends are slightly rubbed. Boards are clean, binding is sound and pages are clear. LW. Seller Inventory # 545302

Synopsis:

Death and the way society comes to terms with it have become a major area of scholarly and popular interest, as evidenced in the work of such well-known figures as Philippe Aries and Elisabeth Kubler Ross. Photographs and other forms of pictorial imagery play an important role in these investigations. Secure the Shadow is an original contribution that lies at the intersection of cultural anthropology and visual analysis, a field that Jay Ruby's previous writings have helped to define. It explores the photographic representation of death in the United States from 1840 to the present, focusing on the ways in which people have taken and used photographs of deceased loved ones and their funerals to mitigate the finality of death.

Sometimes thought to be a bizarre Victorian custom, photographing corpses has been and continues to be an important, if not recognized, occurrence in American life. It is a photographic activity, like the erotica produced in middle-class homes by married couples, that many privately practice but seldom circulate outside the trusted circle of close friends and relatives. Along with tombstones, funeral cards, and other images of death, these photographs represent one way in which Americans have attempted to secure their shadows.

Ruby employs newspaper accounts, advertisements, letters, photographers' account books, interviews, and other material to determine why and how photography and death became intertwined in the nineteenth century. He traces this century's struggle between America's public denial of death and a deeply felt private need to use pictures of those we love to mourn their loss. Americans take and use photographs of dead relatives and friends in spite of and not because of society's expectation about the propriety of these means. Ruby compares photographs and other pictorial media of death, founding his interpretations on the discovery of patterns in the appearance of the images and a reconstruction of the conditions of their production and utilization.

About the Author: Jay Ruby is Professor of Anthropology at Temple University. He has published extensively in archaeology, popular music, film, television, and photography, and has been exploring the relationship between cultures and pictures for the past thirty years.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in ...
Publisher: The MIT Press, Cambridge, M.A.
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition, First Printing.
Book Type: Used