Images and fear: Repressed pictures as tools for analysing society

This article discusses societal attitudes to images, concentrating on photographs. What may or may not be photographed communicates a lot about a society. As the ability to take photographs increases, with ever more digital devices capable of capturing images, so do various restrictions. These restrictions are connected with the deep fears images can engender. Using examples from Estonia, this article demonstrates that while photographic images continue to have the power to shock, the way and extent to which this happens depends on the particular contexts in which they are created and interpreted.