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Post-mortem photography is the practice of photographing the recently deceased. Various cultures use and have used this practice, though the best-studied area of post-mortem photography is that of Europe and America. [1]
Photographs of loved ones taken after they died may seem morbid to modern sensibilities. But in Victorian England, they became a way of commemorating the dead and blunting the sharpness of grief.
In Victorian England, post-mortem photography became a popular way to commemorate the dead. Before long, this macabre trend spread all across the globe. During this era, infants and children were especially vulnerable to disease.
Too-stiff posture, unnatural-looking eyes, or eerie shadows can easily start a photo’s postmortem career, and much of this supposed evidence is, again, just evidence of an older photography...
In an era when photos were expensive and many people didn’t have any pictures of themselves when they were alive, post-mortem photography was a way for families to remember their deceased...
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.
Post-mortem photography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is, at first glance, difficult to spot. Is a family member’s neck at a strange angle? Many are in a reclining position, slightly propped up to seem like they are supporting themselves.
What does it mean to remember? For some, remembrance means capturing an image, documenting not just a life, but a death. In the nineteenth century, photographers were often called upon to do postmortem photography, capturing the stillness of the final moment.
Post-mortem photography became a way for families to cope with the deaths of infants and children, to provide themselves with some tangible memory of the deceased's existence.
Post-mortem photographs are images taken of people after death. Memorial and post-mortem photography was common from the birth of the daguerreotype in 1839 to the 1930s. Deaths were frequent in the 19th and early 20th centuries and many people – especially children – had no photograph taken of them while living.