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For many people of the Victorian era, a post-mortem portrait might be their first experience with photography. The relatively new technology presented an opportunity to retain a permanent image of their deceased relatives — many of whom had never been photographed while they were alive.
In images that are both unsettling and strangely poignant, families pose with the dead, infants appear asleep, and consumptive young ladies elegantly recline, the disease not only taking their...
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.
In a post ostensibly showing Victorian postmortem photos, number eight on the list is an image that has been passed around many corners of the Internet—Viralnova quotes the photo source as...
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.
Today, Victorian mourning practices seem excessively morbid, even macabre. 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.
Post-mortem photography was particularly popular in Victorian Britain. [23] From 1860 to 1910, these post-mortem portraits were much like American portraits in style, focusing on the deceased either displayed as asleep or with the family; often these images were placed in family albums. [4]
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.
In addition to stopping clocks, Victorian people covered mirrors in the home following a death. There is some speculation as to why this is done—it could be so mourners don't have to see how they look when they're crying and grieving.
Known as memento mori (which means “remember you must die”), the trend became increasingly popular for a period of time, and even Queen Victoria slept underneath a photo of her dead husband.