A gaunt-looking man in his early sixties stands in a graveyard, hands in pockets, a scarf round his neck, his expression grim but stoical. But it is the story behind the photograph that makes it extraordinary: the man in the frame is Philip Gould, political strategist, and the place where he is standing is the exact plot where, just a fortnight later, he is going to be buried. The portrait was taken on 27 October 2011; nine days later, on 6 November, Gould was dead. In his final weeks, diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decided to document his feelings about his death as a way of taking ownership of what was happening to him. This image, taken by Adrian Steirn, was part of that quest to make sense of the boundary he was so soon to cross.
04 May 2017, The Tablet
Staring death in the face
Life, Death and Memory, National Portrait Gallery, London
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