Memento Mori

Until last night, I had completely forgotten about a rather macabre Victorian tradition - post mortem photography. While doing a quick internet search to see if I could find anything more about this, I happened upon a short little article that had a nice concise explanation as well as a bunch of photos. Just a quick warning, if you get freaked out easily, I probably wouldn't recommend looking at many of the pictures (there are quite a few of deceased infants and children). I generally enjoy weird and macabre things, and some of them were even a bit creepy for me.

Over the past few years, I have come to learn and appreciate the Victorian's strange obsession with death and funerals. Funerals were rather elaborate and the whole idea of death was a very public one. We must remember that this was a time of disease and a high mortality rate, especially among infants.

With the invention of photography, lower income families were able to have portraits taken of their loved ones after death as a keepsake (until this point, you would have had to hire someone to paint portraits, which would be costly). According to the article I found, early portraits were usually a close up of the face. It also states that the individual being photographed is usually depicted to appear as though they are sleeping, although, I have seen photos where it appears eyes are wide open. There are later examples that I have seen that include living family members posed with the deceased. Examples of photos from the article also show a number of portraits that include individuals propped up on chairs, or in coffins.

So, I thought I'd conclude with a video, it's about four minutes long and begins by giving you background on what Victorian post mortem photography is all about, and then has a slide show of some of the photos you can find on the internet. If you're interested, take a look!

If anyone knows anything else about this, I'd love to learn more, so point me in the right direction!