Award‑winning photographer Julian Kingma spent over a year documenting the deeply personal stories of individuals who chose voluntary assisted dying (VAD) under Australia’s landmark VAD laws, culminating in his powerful photo essay book The Power of Choice.
Kingma’s evocative portraits, accompanied by essays from broadcaster and VAD advocate Andrew Denton and acclaimed author Richard Flanagan, invite readers to confront profound questions about autonomy, dignity, and what constitutes a “good death”.
Denton, best known for his trailblazing ABC TV interview series The Money or the Gun and Enough Rope, became the face of the campaign for voluntary assisted dying law reform, inspired by the experience of his late father, Australian author Kit Denton.
In 2016, Denton set up the charity Go Gentle Australia after his forensic podcast on the failure of end of life laws in Australia, Better Off Dead. By platforming personal stories, his work has helped to shift public sentiment on the issue. Through his tireless campaigning for Go Gentle, Denton has been instrumental in securing VAD legislation across six states and the Australian Capital Territory.
Together, Kingma and Denton have crafted a book that humanises a controversial policy, illustrating how access to assisted dying can offer relief and agency to those facing terminal illness, while challenging societal taboos around death and dying. The Power of Choice not only documents intimate final chapters, but also serves as a catalyst for broader conversations about mortality, ethics, and the role of law in end‑of‑life care.
As Australia continues to navigate its evolving VAD framework, this collaboration between artist and advocate offers a uniquely compassionate lens on the choices we make at life’s threshold, and the cultural shifts they demand.
Kingma and Denton will also appear at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival on Friday 23rd May, to discuss the book and its themes, and bring these conversations to a broader audience. Honi Soit caught up with them at the Old Clare Hotel in Chippendale.
JK = Julian Kingma
AD = Andrew Denton
Julian, in your book The Power of Choice you describe having a long term fear of death and interest in mortality. Has this project changed this? Are you still afraid of death?
JK: Yes, it did change it and I’m still afraid of death, but I now know that it’s not going to be painful. I know that I’ll be able to take control over it. It’s been a really nice thing to work through as a cathartic process as well over the past few years. So now I’m much more comfortable with it. I don’t know if I’m over it, but I’m close.
AD: I’d say he’s keen for it, he can’t wait.
JK: Yeah, no I’m looking forward to it.
When you decided to start this project was it more out of an interest in VAD or death in general?
JK: It was more to do with VAD because, over the years in my job, I’ve had to do a lot of end-of-life stories. For instance, I had to spend five weeks in the cancer ward documenting people who are dying, and that stuck with me. It was only when I listened to Andrew’s podcast that I realised that I wanted to get to a point where I could maybe express how this is not a good way to go, that we need to change this law.
Andrew, I understand that Julian was inspired on this project by your podcast ‘Better off Dead.’ What was it about Julian and his project that made you want to get involved?
AD: Well, I knew Julian’s work. I’m a big fan of photography and I really admire Julian’s work, and I know the power of a great photograph to tell a story actually in a way nothing else can.
It’s funny how a frozen image can burn itself into your consciousness even more than a moving image. And knowing that to do something like this required great intimacy, I thought that to be able to put this process, this law, this experience, on the record in this way would have a very long tail. There’s a more powerful thing that you can give people than an argument, and that’s understanding. I felt that this book is a way to give politicians and health professionals and people who are struggling with their health an understanding of what the end of life can be —- in a way that perhaps no other means could.
Your portraits capture people at the edge of life. What ethical and aesthetic considerations did you balance when capturing these images? How does photography shape our understanding of death?
JK: It’s a tricky question actually to answer because I often went through the ethics and morals in my head for the past two years. I think people just giving permission to tell their story and insisting I was welcome — and so that allayed my fears to a certain degree. It was a strange space to be in because when someone, a stranger, essentially allows you into their home, I feel like I need to build a certain amount of trust with someone. I thought that was more important, that I got that trust with the families, the family members and particularly the people who were dying, that I was there for the good of their cause.
I had to take their word for it that they were okay with it. I was very careful and very measured about the way I approached the photography. I made sure that everyone was comfortable. I would often ask a lot of questions and ask if they were okay with something, and just check and keep checking in with them. Thankfully, I got to do many visits, but still I had that in the back of my mind, “be careful, be careful”. I questioned myself a lot, if I’m honest.
In the book, Andrew’s introduction highlights Paul Keating’s view that voluntary assisted dying conflicts with the sanctity of human life. Later in the book, GP Judith Riseley describes the emotional weight of assisting in her late husband’s VAD, despite intellectually believing in it. How do you make sense of this tension between respecting life and honouring the choice to end it?
AD: That’s a really good question. I think that the sanctity of life argument, which Paul Keating who comes from a Catholic tradition argues, is very important to those people who hold those beliefs. This law utterly respects and enshrines their right to hold those beliefs. Where I think it becomes hugely problematic is when those beliefs are imposed upon those that don’t hold them, and are imposed through medicine or through law.
On a personal level, Judith Riseley is a fascinating case because she is trained and practices VAD; she believes in it. But she found the actual experience of being there when her husband was assisted to die, as do her children who I have spoken with, morally confronting.
I think that just speaks to two realities, one is that death and dying are complicated and they are for most people. And secondly, that you can hold two things, and many humans do, two things in opposition to each other. It takes a force of, in this case, care and transcending your own anxieties to care for that person who is dying. What that speaks to, and what VAD often speaks to I think, is an incredible act of human compassion. I don’t want to lose this person, I so don’t want to lose this person. I even find the way this is happening really confronting. But my need to care for them transcends all. So in essence, I think it speaks to the messiness of life and the messiness of death and they are largely unavoidable.
What was the process of editing and getting this book like? Were there any stories or details you chose to omit?
JK: No, we collaborated and we were always on the same page about how this was going to work. I mean, thankfully for these guys, they gave that breadth and variation throughout the book so it wasn’t just one dimension.
AD: It was important to us. Judith Riseley is a case in point, Phil O’Keefe is another, we didn’t want it to be all “Wow! VAD’s fantastic!” It’s not all fantastic, and it’s not always what people choose; even though they thought they were going to do it, it’s ultimately not how it turns out. Speaking to that previous answer, I guess we wanted the book to be honest that it’s complicated and it’s not a silver bullet. You are still dead at the end — and last time I looked most people don’t want to be.
JK: I think with Phil O’Keefe, he was a classic example of how: he had an ideal version of how he wanted to die and in the end he said to me “I keep moving the goalposts”. He says “I’ve got FOMO, I’ve got fear of missing out, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to say goodbye, nobody ever does” and in the end, like Andrew [Denton] said, he chose to not use VAD, but he did choose a day to die. He went peacefully and he went without pain and that’s probably really all that matters.
Where in the world has the best VAD legislation in your view, and why? How does this compare with the law in NSW?
AD: I’m going to give an answer you don’t expect and it’s a fascinating almost anomaly: it’s Switzerland. Our laws are, if you actually look at the legislation, it’s a hundred something pages of codicils and paragraphs and what have you. The Swiss law you could write on the back of a beer coaster and it essentially says it is not a criminal offence to assist someone to die as long as you are not doing it for selfish purposes. That’s it. And it dates back to the 1940s.
Now, if you were an opponent of these laws, Switzerland by right should be an example of a society gone mad where people are killing each other left right and centre. The numbers as in every other country are very small. But it is the one country in the world where nationals from other places, including Australia, can go if their own laws don’t help them, or don’t exist, to be assisted to die. It’s not like you just turn up and say “I want to die, somebody help me” — you still have to go through medical protocols. But Switzerland, I don’t know what it is in Swiss thinking, it just has the most adult conversation. It just says you can do this, and we can talk about this, and we are not going to put layers and layers of bureaucracy over the top of it, you are adults.
NSW legislation compared to Victoria, which was the first passed, is a lot better. It’s two things. One is that you have to have two doctors confirm that you are terminally ill, six months or less to live, or with a neurodegenerative disease twelve months or less to live.
Now, that still leaves a lot of power in the hands of doctors. And recently a friend of mine, he was at the launch last night, a man dying of cancer, it took him months to get his oncologist — and he has stage four cancer both in his lungs and in his liver — to get his oncologist to actually agree that he should have the right to VAD. I understand why within our system there are all these safeguards, but it still leaves a lot of the power in the hands of the medical professionals. The whole point of these laws is to actually put control back in the hands of the person in the bed, the person dying.
How do VAD laws actually shape people’s experiences and decisions, considering that those who most urgently need assisted dying might seek to end their lives regardless of legality of such an option?
JK: I think that, when I listened to Andrew’s podcast, that was the thing that stuck in my head as well. The same thing. I think I can freely say that a lot of people do and did take their own lives in such circumstances and it’s dreadful.
AD: The most powerful evidence presented in the Victorian debate and elsewhere was the evidence of coroners about people who had taken their own lives and the ways in which they had done it because they had terminal illness. People who had argued against this talked about harm and danger and protecting vulnerable people. We countered with — this is harm, this is danger, these are vulnerable people, but you don’t want to protect them?
VAD is only available to those over 18 in NSW, though the ACT once considered lowering the age to 14. Do terminal diseases consider such age limits? Should the ‘power of choice’ ever extend to younger people?
AD: It’s a great question, in Europe and in the Netherlands, and Belgium they have laws to allow minors, consenting minors, to be legally assisted to die. But there’s a much higher bar of competency required. There’s a thing called the Gillick test, which is a standard applied to minors about demonstrating their understanding of the process. But the parents have to agree, and the treating team have to agree. So the numbers [sic] of minors that are assisted to die in these countries are tiny, because can you imagine what it’s like to be a parent in that situation?
But to go to your question, you are quite right. It’s actually — even more than dementia — the most emotive question in this whole thing; because on one level you say, as I heard the Catholic archbishop of Sydney Saint Anthony Fisher say, you are killing babies and children, you can’t kill children. But you are right: if you are 16 and have pancreatic cancer you are no less sick than someone who is 18. Personally, if you ask me, I think our laws should extend to that, but I think politically it’s an emotionally explosive mission.
What type of things make a good photo in the context of those about to undergo voluntary assisted dying? What type of things were you looking for?
JK: I went into this with a whole lot of preconceived ideas, and what I did learn and am still learning (because it’s quite new for me, learning and finding my way) is to take my cues from them: making sure they are comfortable with how they’re being photographed.
Where I am trying to get to is where they are happy to show their vulnerability. I have to make sure that they are comfortable with the circumstances. I’ve got to forget about the camera, and think about it humanistically. It’s quite a difficult, vulnerable spot to be in — even if you are not ill, it’s hard — so I just have to let them take control of that situation. It’s complicated.
AD: Yeah, but I’d like to know, what are you looking for? It’s not just when you take the photograph, it’s the proofing, it’s the choice. What are you looking for?
JK: You know what I do want, and what I wanted more than anything, was honesty. I just wanted it to be an honest image — and I don’t know how that translates because I don’t know what an honest photograph looks like. I really don’t. But what I wanted, was I actually wanted them to give it to me. I didn’t want to steal something that didn’t feel right. I mean, of course, it has got to feel emotional but that’s going to happen anyway. It’s about honesty and how can I do this as honestly as possible and not insert my own ideas.
Many avoid thinking about death until very late in life. What is the value to us and to society in embracing mortality as young people, as children, and throughout life?
JK: It’s difficult. I’ve got children as well. Could I do it? I don’t know, but is it important? Yes, it’s very important that we talk about it because culturally we don’t. I didn’t until now. Now I feel a lot more comfortable in front of my own children, in front of anyone in particular. I don’t know how Andrew feels about it — Andrew has family too. Judith was a perfect example. I think about being put in that situation with my sons or my wife, could I do it? I actually don’t know.
AD: My son is 31 and I don’t talk to him much about death, but I know that time will approach. It’s a naturally difficult thing. It’s a big thing to throw at your child. Particularly because he’s an only child. Equally despite all the work I have done, I’ve still not done an advanced care directive, and why? Because I am not going to die. It’s a well known fact that I’m not going to die. I’m sorry that it’s happening to everyone else, but I’m lucky, I’m not going to die.
I think what is important and why I think this book is important is that, of course, it is inevitable. And just as you should understand your rights through life, in the workplace, if you are getting a divorce, you should understand what protections exist for you. Because death is inevitable you should understand what protections exist for you and you should be prepared to ask questions of those who are charged with your care, rather than assuming that they have your best interests at heart — because they may have their best interests at heart or their view at heart rather than yours. I think it is about empowerment for the one thing that is inevitable, the one thing that we are all going to face, which is death.
JK: Except you.
AD: Well obviously not me.
Is there anything you would like to add?
AD: I would just encourage all students to buy the ‘Go Gentle’ merchandise, the t-shirt “What do we want? Death! When do we want it? Now!”
Denton and Kingma, alongside Ashley Hay, will be speaking on a panel at the Sydney Writers Festival on 23rd May.
