Pictures of suffering in elders' narratives

This article is based on 4 respondents' answers to a question posed in our suffering study: Experiences of suffering in late life: “If you could draw or paint, or even take a picture of suffering, what would be in the picture?”This question was included in an in-depth interview that investigated events of suffering in community-dwelling men and women residing in Philadelphia who were aged 80 and above. Respondents were asked to tell a story of suffering earlier in the interview; the question about a picture of suffering invited them to use another medium to describe suffering, or to elaborate the suffering story. This article uses data from each respondent's entire transcript in order to put the picture of suffering in as complete a context as possible.A key finding of this article is that pictures add an unexpected dimension to respondents' story of suffering and reveal creativity and complexity in representing the self and suffering in the research interview.