Picturing
grief
Picturing Grief is a collaborative project between Projecting Grief and the University of York.
In April 2025, we were commissioned by the university’s Philosophy Department to produce a collection of images to raise awareness of their Grief Survey: a rich, searchable database of first-person testimonies of grief gathered through an online qualitative survey. It’s a substantial, fascinating and hugely helpful resource for grieving people, and more people should be able to benefit from it. You can read more about the project behind the Grief Survey here.
The idea for Picturing Grief came out of a desire to visually communicate ideas about the experience of grief in an intriguing and appealing way. As well as being shared online, the images below have been turned into flyers, postcards and coasters and left in places where people might stumble across them them - for example, counselling services, churches, chaplaincies and hospices, but also bars, cafés, libraries and community centres. We hope that finding them will help grieving people and those who support them feel less alone, as well as prompt conversations about grief and loss.
All of the words below are taken directly from responses to the Grief Survey, and all images were shot specifically for this project.
The Grief Survey is now closed to new responses, but we’d love to know how the images and words made you feel. Share your thoughts on the Picturing Grief (or anything you want to, relating to grief) anonymously.
“I would look down at my hands and not recognise them.”
“I felt remote; the world felt remote and artificial; I felt like an observer of a 'story' in which I was oddly the protagonist.”
“I felt him beside me in bed a few times—as if he were getting into bed and settling down to sleep.”
“Yes, it feels as if you are in a glass bowl, with everything going on normally around you but you’re not participating.”
“Your heart does literally ache. I didn’t know that.”
“It is almost like looking through gauze - everything is less defined - colours are less bright, the scent of flowers is not as strong.”
“It's a bit of a blur. I felt like a ghost. I was in the world doing things but I wasn't fully present.”
“My previous world disappeared because the person I did everything (and nothing) with was no longer there.”
Academics/researchers: if you’ve found this project interesting or helpful, feel free to signpost to Picturing Grief and the University of York’s Grief Survey via your website, newsletter etc. Please contact us for images, and credit to Projecting Grief.