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27 Victorian Death Photos — And The Disturbing History Behind Them. View Gallery. Thanks to high mortality rates and the rampant spread of disease, death was everywhere during the Victorian era. So many people came up with creative ways to remember the dead — including Victorian death photos.
Victorian nurseries were plagued by measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, rubella - all of which could be fatal. It was often the first time families thought of having a photograph taken -...
Post-mortem photography provided a new means to memorialize a loved one after death, and many Victorian post-mortem photos served as family portraits in their own right. They frequently represented moms holding their dead babies or fathers looking over their dying offspring.
Some of these very photos, Zohn says, are now circulating on the same blogs and listicles that claim stands were used to hold the dead.
A greater understanding of the meanings behind practices such as post-mortem photography, however, allows a modern viewer to see an image for what it was: a comforting reminder that a loved one was merely “at rest” and waiting for a heavenly reunion.
After looking at some of the Victorian era photographs of the ghost mothers online, I stumbled across the practice of post mortem photography, the popular Victorian practice of taking a photo of a loved one after they have died.
Early photos were sometimes referred to as “mirrors with memories,” and the Victorians saw photographing the dead as one way of preserving the memory of a family member.
Contrary to mainstream modern sensibilities about death photos, photographs of loved ones taken posthumously served as an important way of remembering the dead and soothing the pain of loss in Victorian England.
In the 1850s, families began commissioning portraits of their deceased loved ones in a trend that came to be known as "memento mori" photography.
Researchers are collecting photos of the dead, including images of deceased infants, for a planned exhibition that will examine how photographers deal with challenging subjects.