What is death?
What happens when we die?
100 Australians were invited to write a letter responding to these two questions...
“So beautiful - I feel I’m being given the secrets of life through these letters”
About.
Tina FiveAsh
Creator / Photographer
The Death Letter Project is an ongoing Australian photography and writing project created by photographer and social activist Tina FiveAsh. Since 2014, the project has invited Australians from diverse backgrounds to handwrite a personal letter responding to two universal questions: What is death? and What happens when we die?
Combining handwritten correspondence with intimate photographic portraits, the online socially engaged project explores contemporary beliefs, fears, hopes, grief, spirituality, and the enduring mystery surrounding mortality. Each letter is presented alongside a portrait photographed in the participant’s own environment, creating a deeply personal record of both presence and perspective.
What began as an invitation to fifty Australians has continued to expand organically over the past decade. Since 2023, FiveAsh has been extending the series toward one hundred Australian participants, further broadening the project’s cultural and philosophical scope. Contributors include individuals who have experienced near-death events, profound grief and loss, spiritual awakenings, and who hold diverse understandings of the afterlife.
As the letters gradually arrived—by post, email, or personal delivery—the act of reading them became an intimate ritual in itself: unfolding handwritten pages and encountering the innermost reflections of strangers and acquaintances alike. Through these exchanges, the project has evolved into not only an archive of voices, but an ongoing meditation on mortality, remembrance, spirituality, and what it means to be human.
In contemporary Western culture, death is often medicalised, institutionalised, and removed from everyday conversation. The Death Letter Project seeks to contribute to the growing international movement surrounding death literacy: encouraging more open, compassionate, and meaningful engagement with death, dying, grief, and end-of-life reflection. By creating space for personal testimony, vulnerability, and philosophical inquiry, the project invites audiences to reconsider mortality not solely as an ending, but as a subject worthy of contemplation, dialogue, and cultural visibility.
The Death Letter Project has generated significant public engagement, leading to invitations for FiveAsh to speak on national and international radio programs, podcasts, panel discussions, workshops, conferences, and annual events such as the Sydney Festival of Death and Dying. In 2019, the project inspired Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina, to launch their own Death Letter Project commemorating the cemetery’s 150th anniversary.
In 2024, FiveAsh was interviewed by Ray Martin about the Death Letter Project for the three-part SBS documentary series Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye, produced by BBC Studios Australia.
For further information about Tina FiveAsh please visit:
“Tina strikes me as thoughtful, considered, and I think wise”
“These are the most wonderful photos and stories”
Reviews
“You have helped so many people consider death in a healthy way and recover from the trauma of losing someone they have loved.”
“You made it ok to talk about death and for us to sit in that vulnerable space. Thanks”
“Love the death letter project Tina.. great worthwhile work, thanks.. sharing a variety of perspectives on the magnitude of death is thought provoking on the stuff of life..”
“An incredible and moving project xx”
“Thank you for creating this project. I really look forward to reading each letter and seeing the photographs you post. Looks like you’re really cultivating a sense of comfort and OK-ness for people to talk about death whether it’s their own or others.”
Series One of this research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. Series Two is self-funded by Tina FiveAsh.