Why post mortem photos

Once it became common for people of different income levels to have pictures taken during their life, there was less need to capture their image in death. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. Unless otherwise specified, the examples below belong to the Mark A. Anderson Collection of Post-Mortem Photography.

Montgomery P. Simons, [unknown child holding flowers], hand-colored stereoscopic ambrotype in a Mascher case, Philadelphia: ca. Harvey Cook Jackson, [young woman in her casket], silver gelatin print, Detroit: ca.

Jackson was the first African American photographer to establish a photo studio in Detroit. Post-mortem photos sometimes show deceased children with their parents or siblings. When family members viewed such images, they were able to see their personal connection to their loved one. Right: A. Death portraiture became increasingly popular. 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 - it was the last chance to have a permanent likeness of a beloved child. But as healthcare improved the life expectancy of children, the demand for death photography diminished.

The advent of snapshots sounded the death knell for the art - as most families would have photographs taken in life. Now, these images of men, women and children stoically containing their grief in order to preserve the likeness of a taken-too-soon loved one, continue to live up to their name. Image source,. It was common for families to have lots of children, and also common for them to die before their fifth birthday.

Many postmortem pictures show parents cradling their children, or wives alongside their deceased husbands. The corpse figures prominently, but so do the shattered expressions of those left behind. A surprising number of fathers appear—at this time, men could openly admit their grief. There are parents so young they look like children themselves. Many subjects make trembling attempts at self-composure. Rituals help the living overcome the desire to die with the dead.

As a ritual, postmortem photography helped check grief. By pressing subjects to execute specific poses and gestures, death photos helped the living externalize personal loss. The faces of many mourners evidence the struggle. How else to interpret a daguerreotype of a mother lying next to her child? The convention makes death look easy and gentle—a rest from labor. But this conceit has an ulterior motive: to trick the viewer into believing that death is sleep, no metaphor about it.

Consider the image above, of a boy who bears no trace of decay in his luscious round face. Such images mix comfort with a kind of cruelty. Postmortem daguerreotypes are piercingly intimate. Many were taken at home. No props here: These are the chairs the dead once sat in, the toys their living bodies held. Beginning in , daguerreotypy gave way to the wet collodion process , which made photography cheaper, faster, and reproducible.

The medium soared in popularity, and the market for postmortem photography expanded. As it did, the aspirations for postmortem photos also rose. By the s, death photos began explicit attempts to animate the corpse.

Dead bodies sit in chairs, posed in the act of playing or reading.