So this week, month, and some of this year, and years before, I have been contemplating art. In a classic photographic text, I came across a statement of three questions to think about when contemplating a photograph, which can apply to any piece of art: What has the artist done? What was the artist trying to achieve? Was it worth it? The first is a straightforward description of what you see. The second, an analysis of what you think it means. The third...? That third point

Sorry I've been so quiet recently. I had a long rest after Dying for Life, then a push to write up the final bits for my photography degree and Arts Council grant. And now I'm converting some of my dissertation (and yes, that's a link to my actual dissertation - if you fancy a read) into a 20 minute whirlwind tour of death in visual art in the past 1000 years for the Death and the Maiden conference. I am currently wrangling with quite how much I should venture my personal the

Death in Cambridge. It doesn't sound as glamorous as Death in Venice, but we have arty buildings and the punting. Most of all, we have a fantastic base of people enthusiastic about sharing art, information, ideas and conversation about dying and death which may well just have an impact on the way we choose to live our lives. This sprang out of a surprisingly fun meeting at Death Cafe in Cambridge last year. It was the first time I experienced a gathering of people determined

... to the Wellcome Collection. A wonderful way to spend an afternoon. And actually my favourite part were the audio extracts, one of which was on the headphones behind this... skeleton? It is a description by Albert Howard Carter III (in First Cut: A season in the human anatomy lab) of medical students cutting hearts out of cadavers: "A quick worker, he is the first to have a heart entirely removed from the body. I watch him cut the last blood vessel and pull the heart up an