Postmortem Photographs

Mourning is a strange thing, and different cultures deal with it in vastly different ways. But there’s a reason people associate the Victorians above all with morbidity and death, and one of them is memento mori like this:

The fact is, postmortem photographs like this were taken more than any other kind of photograph in the Victorian era — especially in the U.S. — and in many cases these carefully-arranged, meticulously staged pictures were the only ones ever taken of their subjects. From Stanley Burns’ book Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America:

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One Response to Postmortem Photographs

  1. bpat says:

    To me that's just plain creepy. I don't even view the remains ,perferring to remember them in life. I figure now I'm not going to anybodys funeral that Isn't coming to mine

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