Historical Thursday: Memento Mori
This week we will be delving into a topic that may seem morbid, but has had a significant role and effect in our perception of death in modern life. Post-mortem photography was popularized in the mid to late 19th century as a continuation of the ancient art of remembrance of the dead. While one could see these photos as macabre, they certainly have a role as mementos of the past, and a way of preserving the image of the deceased in way that their loved-ones choose. Although understandably tragic, the photographs’ role allows families a beautiful memory of their deceased loved ones.
Many of the subjects of the photos were young children, which reflects a definite change in regards to the decrease in the infant mortality rate in developed nations. Being the great equalizer that death is, people of all ages were memorialized this way. The bodies were preserved following certain procedures that are still practiced today with regards towards physical preservation (embalming with arsenic salts, alcohol, and formaldehyde) and dressed in their finest clothes.
Keep in mind that photography in the 19th century was an elaborate process; both time consuming and certainly expensive. For many people this was the only photo that would be taken of them. Typically the deceased are depicted as sleeping following through on the notion of death as permanent state of sleep, but also because generally people died asleep in their beds.
With the increasing ubiquity of camera technology this practice has fallen wayside, but there are still concepts and ideas which arose from these rituals such as the (now defunct) website Deathspace which in a certain way acts as a way of using technology to remembering the deceased.
Information courtesy of: Dan Meinwald, Art Of Mourning
Images courtesy of: Mr.Fox: Post Mortem and Wikipedia
As always, if YOU have an idea for a future Historical Thursday, please email it to me at thereifixedit@gmail.com.
Wow. That’s fascinating and horrifying at the same time, but only horrifying to a modern person who grew up with disposable and digital cameras cheapening the medium. The three photos are all unsettling in different ways. The first one looks to be twins, or brothers close in age; people who must have been very close but are now separated by the most impassable divide of humanity. The second one is sad because it is an image we have all seen: young children after a long day of excitement casually asleep in their protective parents’ laps. Only these children will never have excitement again, and there is nothing their parents can do to protect them. The last photo has a disturbing affect immediately on account of the clear, open eyes of the deceased. I would have not guessed that this was a post mortem photo of her. The focus is on her face, gazing sightlessly into nothing, while the blurry mother gazes away into another nothing and the faded, hazy father is the only one making eye contact. It is amazing to realize that everyone in these photos is now dead. I think these images will be with me for a long time. Thank you for sharing.
Thank-you Annie for saying that better than I ever could.
my thanks too Annie
I’m with coyote and G, I was never good with words. The feeling’s there, but I couldn’t have expressed it as eloquently. Thank you.
The middle/second one is definitely the hardest to look at. Two (or both) of their children are dead – the father looks distraught. And what’s so hard is they don’t look dead – they just look like any child after a long day.
Yes. Look how his left hand is gripping his coat. A man in pain
It’s so tragic. I can’t look away from the father’s eyes… The pain he’s feeling at that moment is something I hope to never experience. It seems to shatter our perceptions of male/female roles in the era, too. The mother is stoic, controlled… While Dad looks ready to overflow with emotion.
The second one, especially, tears my heart out. Those poor parents! And the first one does look like twins, at least to me. I can feel the grief pouring out of these people.
I think it is just amazing that after all those years everyone is shocked seeing these photo’s. Even though we don’t know these people, and the ‘living’ on the photo’s have long past on as well.
Life is short, and there’s nothing to ‘fix’ about that.
The “blur” effect (and if you look closely at ALL these (and other post mortem photos in that time frame) have the blur as well) basically shows WHO is alive and who is the deceased.
At the start of photography, one of the “drawbacks” (aside from the mentioned expense) was that there was no “speed” technology. The photographed had to sit as still as possible for up to 20 mins. to get a good picture (it took that long for the plate to register the image). This is why you rarely see anyone in 18th century photos smiling….would you if you had to sit still so long?
Anyway, the blur on the living is because they are breathing/shifting/shivering during the process…the deceased are NOT moving, hence the much clearer image.
(former photography student/historian)
3rd is shopped. See snopes.
The thing that stood out to me is the picture of the two dead children. That father looks crumpled and miserable (as anyone would be).
Wow! This is so touching!
No, definitely NOT!!!!! This is just creepy beyond belief.
Creepy? Maybe for a “modern” and narrow minded person who can’t try to understand.
Seriously, for these people, those pictures were probably the last and only souvenir that they were going to have of their precious family. I honestly can’t say that I wouldn’t have done the same.
Thus, personally, I don’t find this creepy at all or disturbing, simply sad and quite touching. These people Loved the ones who died.
Only in our “own time” is this considered “creepy”. But think of this….HOW is this any creepier than video taping a wake/funeral (which happens all the time)? Or for that mater, having an open casket wake at all (let alone the new fad of “death posed funerals” http://www.inquisitr.com/71414/puerto-rican-funeral-home-poses-dead-man-on-motorcycle/)
Wow… You’re a dick.
just remember there as a whole business made due to folks dying. including funeral jewelry. be it made from the hair and or the clothing of the dead. and or in a mourning fashion-made to be mostly of black colour items such as jet, or other things that could be dyed black.
also there was a whole set of ettiquette rules on clothing, jewelry and how one could act during a set time of mourning. and it was a different time frame. if it was a spouse or parent. you were expected to be in mourning for up to a year, if not more. meaning you had to wear black that entire time and no happy times like parties for you.
I took some pictures of my deceased father in his coffin last Thursday. Those are the only pictures I have. All his belongings (and photo’s) were lost in a fire. I never met my father since he left my mother when I was just 2 years old. I don’t think taking pictures of a dead person is creepy.
The parents holding their dead children was TOO much. I know different times, different culture but that picture is going to haunt me.
It’s tragic because this photograph is probably the only one ever taken of their babies–the only visual image that the parents will have to remember them by.
This is amazingly creepy.
This is still done today, especially for babies: http://www.squidoo.com/bereavement-photography. It can be helpful for a family to have a few photographs they would otherwise be without.
I know a 2 families that had children stillborn and keep the hospital photos framed with the rest of the family portraits.
A few years back, my pal’s father took a photo of his wife, in her casket. She would never allow her photo to be taken., in 30 years of marriage, this would be the only photo he had of her not “making faces”.
Not a fan. I don’t subscribe to the RSS to be depressed. As a father with a son and daughter the second image is too much.
as the website folks said. this was a common thing.
still remember seeing pics of my dead great aunts, uncles, cousins. even as infants laid out in their coffins.
This is a very interesting post, very touching and disturbing at the same time.
This is so touching. The way that the views of death, mortality and mourning has changed over the years is amazing….
It reminds me of Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep – http://www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org/ , an amazing organization that connects professional photographers to take photographs of infants that have died shortly after birth, either through a still birth or a disease or something.
I always wondered where I could find pictures like these. There is a site very similar to the Deathspace that is still up and running. It’s called MyDeathSpace.
Jeeeez. I am a mother of two and these photos made me really, really sad.
I don’t think I will look at old family portraits the same again.
so what was the kludge?
I want a picture to rember Jimmy, but he’s dead and there are no pictures ever made of him… there I fixed it
I was wondering the same thing, but locs I think you’re right.
Side note to the site: Although I’m generally interested in these kinds of things, and I myself am not offended, I would recommend that as a website known more for humor, it would be best to preface something like this post with a caution to the viewer. Death should be discussed more in our society in healthy ways, but some people are not always prepared to do so.
Ditto; I too was not offended and felt for the families in these pictures. As a father of 2 young children I was distraught to see the second picture. I still would have investigated the pictures but a foreword would have been appreciated because the look in that mans eyes cut deep.
Wonderful.
Oh my God… the middle picture has me pretty much transfixed with mute horror. It’s about as close to a waking nightmare as I could possibly imagine. I have to say, it’s the last thing I expected to find on There I Fixed It…
This is sad, and Annie’s comment made it even worse
As touching as these pictures were, I found it to be in very poor taste to have them on a webpage devoted to pictures of people fixing things in stupid ways.
seems we share thoughts
Those are very sweet and eerie. I was just reading this:
http://www.lensculture.com/schels.html
which has portraits of people before and after their deaths.
I think it is a beautiful way to remember once family. I know it was practist (among otherthings from the movie “the others”) but was unaware of the possing with living people aspect.
The first time I had heard of this was from the movie “The Others”. At first I thought it was all fake, but my grandmother (who had seen the movie with me) said that part was, in fact, real, and that she remembered seeing some post-mortem pictures when she was little. A few months ago we were discussing this in a paranormal message board and someone had posted a website that featured a lot of those pictures. I think the creepiest one I had seen was with a man standing up, and you could see the stand that was supporting him in the frame.
Patrick,
I saw that kind of pics on that movie too. Never tought it could real. Amazing!
Well so much for humor. Wow. Next time, pull up some the first photos taken of autopsies, why don’t ya? Any photos from some WWI casualties hanging about? Surely there are some Old West photos of hangings that can be obtained somewhere? Anything from the Killing Fields of Cambodia?
Geeze, dude. I thought this was a humor site. If I wanted gore and death, I am sure I could find it elsewhere. I come here for humor, not disturbing death pictures.
Well, at least they only do this on Thursdays. You know when to avoid this website.
Quite frankly I found this rather interesting, and educational. Believe it or not, learning is not a horrible thing!
I get it that death is hard for most of us, but these photos are not gore. To compare them to autopsies or war photos seems kinda off base. And a little disrespectful even. They are sad, they are to some morbid. Especially today when this practice has fallen to the wayside. Death has become something that is not a part of everyday life.
That said, this may not be the best forum for these pics for some people. It did not horrify me, or disturb me but I get that it does others. But it is not gore!
I normally love Historical Thursday but this one is just too sad.
It really doesn’t fit with the rest of this website at all.
What is most striking is the reaction of the children’s parents. In the second picture the father has lost it. In the last it is mesmerizing to see that the ones left alive are moving slightly; which brings striking relief to the motionless daughter.
Yeah- I love the last one. The parents are motion-blurred, so they look anxious, but the daughter is still and peaceful because she has nothing left to worry about. The first two excellently illustrate the feeling of lost. They seem to portray things that today’s colorful, vivid cameras can’t capture.
I hate to say this, but both children are dead. They lost both kids.
Bri-Bri was referring to the last one with the couple and the adult (?) daughter in the middle, not the one with the two younger kids on their parents’ laps.
This is one custom, along with the custom of keeping a locket of the deceased’s hair, that I do not think anyone is sad to see go. Besides, I prefer to remember my loved ones who have gone before as they were in life; full of fun and excitement. I will be joining them quite soon enough.
my brother has a lock of his 1st wife’s hair in a cross (meant for ashes actually) that he wears all the time. i think the lock of hair thing is alive and kicking.
i think the only reason people don’t still do this is the stigma of touching dead bodies.
This is wonderful. Not what I expected from TIFI, but definitely worthwhile.
There was another example of these in one of my photography textbooks from college. It creeped me out about the same as these. It was a mother who had been made to hold her (assumed stillborn) infant as if it were still alive.
Also, if having to sit with a corpse wasn’t bad enough, exposure times were often well over a minute or two, sometimes even more for the oldest methods, hence the expressionless look and occasional blur. US Civil War era portraits required you to be clamped in place for a clear image.
I’ve actually seen modern pictures of a woman holding her deceased infant. I don’t remember whether he was stillborn or died shortly after birth, but she wanted the photos as a memory. I can totally understand, too, if I lost a baby that soon after being born, I don’t know if I’d want to let go right away either.
That first one was used in A Haunting in Connecticut. The other two seem familiar, too.
The first two were both used in “Haunting in Connecticut”, the other photograph is a real photo of a dead young woman and her parents.
In other words, the twins are alive as are the boy and girl.
I was confused, because one source said that they had been used in “Haunting In Connecticut” and the other stated they were actual photos.
They’re real. They were used as movie props.
This is such a cool site.
Fascinating subject, and the reactions here and elsewhere show how distant and sort of sanitized our present view of the dead is – out of sight as fast as possible.
On the other hand – in a post for ThereIFixedIt? Not really appropriate.
i still can’t believe those children are dead. i can’t handle it. very interesting, but not at all related to thereifixedit. i ended up sobbing because of the link to the death pictures of babies in the nicu. my baby was in the nicu. thanks for ruining my evening.
I’ve seen these photos before. I only wish I knew the back story. I don’t know how to put it into words, but I think it’s very loving and touching. A picture is a frozen moment in time that lives for eternity.
This is crazy – I can’t imagine people doing this nowadays… I wonder if they would make YouTube videos out of it…
Here are a lot more memento mori photographs.
http://www.bestgore.com/medical/memento-mori-old-black-and-white-photos-dead-children/
So where’s the ‘fixing it’ angle?
Nowhere, that’s where. Although this s**t is funnier than Mr/Ms Fix It’s comments.
Like these photos, death is often unexpected. Be kind while you can.
I completely appreciate the morbid beauty of what was posted here, and I find post-mortem photography fascinating, but I do have to agree with some previous comments. This isn’t really in keeping with the general theme of the website. I’m glad I got to see it but I do generally visit humor websites to feel happy instead of sad.
I’m a twin and I nearly busted out crying at the first one. While not a stupid fix, it’s definitely as locs said. If the few people you ever loved went before you and you could never keep another momento, this would be the closest thing to closure you can get (and certainly a fix-it to being able to remembering them). It wouldn’t be any creepier than the old fashioned wakes where the bodies are still there to enjoy to party. Back then, death wasn’t as far away as it can seem now. Thanks for reminding us that the fix-its of history (and our history and the forebears of our customs) aren’t always funny.
Thank you for this.
At both my grandmothers parents funerals they set the open coffins on stands on the church steps with the family standing around them. But they were in the coffin. I’ve never seen this, with the dead posed as if sleeping. It does seem much more morbid to me. But them we don’t live as close to death as people even a hundred years ago did.
One thing I did take from the pictures I have, isn’t so much the death, as the grief. It’s the faces of the living that stays with me. It gave me a connection to the somewhat shattered young woman in the pictures who would eventually be my grandmother, one of the strongest people I have known.
It’s different to see a picture that, while posed, is still in a sense a candid.
I’ve just found this Historical Thursday too haunting. I really didn’t want to feel overwhelmed emotionaly.
I agree with those who have pointed out the inappropriateness of those photos on this (supposedly humor) site. At the end of a long day I visit TIFI for a bit of absurdity to make me smile. I have a daughter and son of my own, about the same age as those two in the middle photo, and I now feel depressed and sick to my stomach. It will be a while before I get those images out of my mind. I will no longer be visiting this site for a laugh, as clearly that is not a guarantee.
While this is certainly an interesting topic and no doubt has its place elsewhere, there is NOTHING funny or amusing about dead children. What is wrong with the editors of this site? Where were you people raised that you find this funny?
Sorry – this belongs in the historical section if any and I really don’t think it belongs on LOL. Death is not funny in any way and I feel this is disrespectful to the people who are pictured here. For whatever reason this was traditional at the time and it is always good to learn something about history, but this site is for amusement and there is nothing funny about this. Y’all need to remove this and give yourselves a supersize EPIC FAIL here.
The gigantic robot and the disguised aircraft factories weren’t funny either, specially considering they were not made out of boredom and for lolz, but because the world was in a state of absolute terror. I love the historical articles, and I see nothing wrong with something serious and interesting from time to time.
Besides, many non-historical kludges from this site are not precisely lol-worthy, and instead they fill me with dread, terror and concern for the survival of our species.
This!
Hmm… I definitely don’t understand what this has to do with TIFI, but it is really interesting and, I think, worthwhile.
In our culture, most of the time, folks don’t think about death. When we do think about death, it does seem to disturb us. I wonder if that’s because we are afraid of it. We don’t want to think it could ever happen to us, or someone close to us, for whom we care deeply. And yet the reality is there. Humanity has a 100% death rate.
For me, that means I see my wife and daughter as gifts put into my care for a time. Someday, that time will be up, for one reason or another. It reminds me to cherish every moment I have with them, even when it’s not particularly fun.
How is this a kludge?
The nineteenth century was very strange in ways that are obscure and distant to us now, since they’re mostly beyond living memory. (The twentieth is getting there, but it’ll be a while yet.) Apparently some 1890s Victorian households had their dead infants electroplated and placed in glass coffins in the living room. I see the kludge in how people deal with death: can’t avoid it, can’t accept it, but feel like we have to do something about it anyway, so we wind up doing clumsy things that come across as horrible later on (but they’re all we could come up with at the time). Thanks for the post.
quote: “can’t avoid it, can’t accept it”
Yeah… can’t fix it either….
In 1995 I had a baby in the Netherlands. I joined a prenatal group for classes, and we met up for postnatal classes as well. One of the women’s baby died of complications following an operation. The first session we were invited to bring our babies. She was there too – with a photo album. She showed us the pictures, of the baby in hospital etc, then said “This is the last picture of her in life”. Then followed pictures of the baby in the bed immediately after death, in her parents arms, and in her coffin. The Dutch women were very matter-of-fact about it – as a Canadian, I was the one who had tears streaming down my cheeks. And yet it wasn’t horrible at all. I thought it was a healthier way of dealing with death than the way we do in North America.
Like most of the people here, I found these pictures to be depressing. However, this was a common practice in the 19th century. How long did this practice last? I’m asking because the second picture was taken in the 20th century, sometime in the 1920′s. This is based on my observation of the mother’s dress. Short dresses first appeared in the 1920′s. Even during WW1 women showing their ankles was considered taboo.
I have photographs of aunts in their coffins that died in the influenza epidemic ~1912. One is a toddler and the other about 4 years old.
What made them doubly distressing to look at was the 4 year old looked *exactly* like my daughter.
I’ve never seen posed pictures like these of the dead, only in coffins. Very interesting practice.
I have a family picture like these that was taken in the early 1930′s, although it was a snapshot made with a box camera outside the family house- 2 aunts (as children) posing with a would-be sibling that died during birth.. and the baby was in a homemade wooden box that it was about to be buried in. This was at the height of the Great Depression, remember- a very different time, for sure.
Facinating! Thanks for brining such interesting topics to Historical Thursday.
This is the saddest thing ever… I can’t stop crying… I really didn’t want to see this…. Oh those poor kids and their parents! The look on the parents’ face is heart breaking… now my day is ruined!
I don’t come to a humor website to cry. Please don’t post things like this again. It’s not a kludge by any means. It’s just sad.
This piece really was a wonderful exhibit of sociology, in less than 100 years ago (this was common practice until the start of WWI) our culture has changed SO MUCH that most view this practice as “morbid” or “creepy”…but we forget that for CENTURIES prior, we thought burial was morbid and creepy….and most STILL tend to think going to cemeteries (at least in the US) is creepy or odd (where as in Europe and the UK, its FAR from uncommon to even hold picinics in grave yards).
While I don’t think I would opt to have staged photos of my dead relitives, I don’t find this too bizarre (though I must agree…it’s not really a Kludge as much as historic, and there really isn’t anything FUNNY about it.)
Dead babies…can’t take pics of themselves
Like it or hate it – these photos DID start some real conversation.
Good point. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s refreshing to see some serious discussion going on in the comments.
As thought provoking as this is, please remember that this is a humor site and people don’t come here to view corpses. The second photo might just give me nightmares. How horrible to lose both children at the same time =(
Actually, something like this still goes on today.
I used to work at a certain copy shop and we took on special jobs once in a while. One special job was photographs of a woman’s stillborn child. It is extremely tragic that the child died and we handled the photographs with extreme care and privacy. They ended up having to be made in mostly black and white due to the discoloration in the child’s face, but… that was her baby! She’ll never get to live or experience life with her baby! All she has now is those photos and I’m sure those are more precious than anything in her life.
When I saw these, all I could think of was how sad those family members were. Especially the parents in the second picture. As ‘creepy’ as it may be to pose with a dead body, it’s the body of someone you knew, someone you loved, someone you were with for years. It may literally be a body, but it’s still the person to the one’s that loved them.
Why is post on Kludges? Where is the kludge?
locs said it above, and I’ll paraphrase:
Our family wants a picture to remember Jimmy by, but there were never any made of him, and now he’s dead… there I fixed it.
The probable reason that there were more of these photos with kids is that people who died at an older age would have a better chance of already having been photographed at least once. This is an act of a distraught family clinging to what they can. I actually think it quite ingenious.
as a Photography Degree student, I’m pretty certain that the first two images are fake, in that they were taken very recently.
The colour balance, tones, quality of image, quality of detail and several other things make me seriously think the first two are fakes…sorry
I may well be wrong, but they look A LOT like someone trying to recreate the morbid death photos like the 3rd (real) one -so would put money on them being fake!
in addition to my previous comment, the way they’re holding the apparently dead children and how the “dead” guy is sitting in the first one make me 99% sure they’re not real – the whole point was to make them look alive (like in the last one, or any other real one you can find) so why make it obviously look like they’re dead?
I agree with you. The clothing looks more 1920s than Victorian, and I believe the popularity of postmortem photography had largely died out by then. The people’s features and expressions don’t really look like those of Victorian people, either – which is a weird critique, but it makes sense if you’ve seen as many Victorian and early 20th century photos as I have.
Memento Mori photographs were not strictly a Victorian practice. The middle photo would probably be from the 30′s during the height of the Great Depression. During this time the average person probably would not be able to afford a luxury such as photographs (especially professional photographs)….unless it was a special occasion. A funeral was a “special” occasion. Oh, and there are still places today where casket photos are taken at funerals. It’s not so common in America but still it isn’t un-heard of.
p.s. These pictures have been around a lot longer than photoshop. I distinctly remember seeing them and others in a college textbook back in the late 80′s.
I have to agree–the first just does not have the aged quality. The colors are too even and the potted plant in both pictures look like it is the same plant.
Reusing a prop doesn’t necessarily mean the photos are fake, just that they come from the same studio. What looks iffy to me is the surface quality of the prints, as well as the features/expressions of the people and the mixed-era clothing.
@ not busy: Pre-photoshop doesn’t equal not fake. People were faking photos as soon as photography was invented. And I could be wrong but didn’t people in the 20s-30s tend to favor images of loved ones lying in state, rather than propped up to look alive?
Very touching.
It only saddens those who refuse to come to terms with the inevitable.
My niece was born stillborn last summer we all had photos taken with her by a group called now I lay me down to sleep, they take free pictures for families who lost babies and children. we did the same thig when my brother passed from cancer this year too.
Okay, I can understand the families taking pictures of the dead to remember those who passed… But is it really appropriate to display them here on this site? Not only were they highly personal and emotional photos for the family, but this is a public board where many people could find such morbid pictures offensive.
Also, the picture with the two children is very depressing. =_= Yes I realize that by now hey would have passed either way, but to see two lives cut short… It is so sad. They look as if they would wake up if you shook them, but they wont. Tragic.
There is an extensive (and very respectful IMO) collection of postmortem photos at thanatos.net, if anyone is interested in seeing more.
Always beware of potential zombies
The kludge is in that a lot of these types of photographs, the families painted eyes onto the people to make them seem as though they were still alive. Check out my previous link. It is morbid, but it is part of history. A lot of people obviously learned something ITT.
Wow. I’m glad I learned about this. Our forebears were more comfortable with death than we are. Lots to think about here. I sympathize with the folks who thought this wasn’t appropriate for TIFI, but I’m glad I saw it.
OH GOD I just finished a long marathon session of creeping myself out and came here for a palate cleanser, only to be greeted with this! *cries*
Normally I would squeal in delight that you featured memento mori, but now, of all times? I’m going to curl up in the fetal position now.
me too.. mascara all over my hands.
I am a pathologist and I can assure you the children in the first 2 pics are not dead. The photos are staged, fake.
Having worked at a morgue for a long time, I can assure the rest of you that there’s no way to tell whether those children are dead or not from those photos. Based on the expressions of those around them and their historical use, I’m inclined to think they are.
I honestly did not see these perverse pictures. And before you call me narrow-minded, remember:
1. This is a site about humour. Pictures of dead children are not supposed to be funny, unless you have some peculiar kinks that will land you in jail for a looooooooong time.
2. There are plenty of fascinating traditions that are outdated simply because society developed to recognize them as wrong, cruel and perverse. Just because they were traditions doesn’t mean we should condone them or admire them.
These pictures are sick, gross and disgusting and they have no place in this site.
I can see the humor in these photo’s, but I think you’re not funny at all. You have no place in this site
Yes, yes, something is wrong, cruel and perverse simply because we do different things and hold different values, now. Remember, folks: It’s always vital that we judge historical practices by modern sensibilities, because we just plain know better now. Tell me, do you have any particular reason to believe this sort of postmortem photography should be universally condemned, or does it just not sit well with you personally?
(I always find it fascinating to wonder about what currently unquestioned practices will be viewed as the height of barbarism in a hundred years. It’s always fun to think about it that way.)
I don’t think the photos are sick or gross, but they’re extremely inappropriate for a humor website. Seeing post-mortem photos with the url of a humor site makes me wonder if someone is playing a sick joke.
Massive Fail.
I just wish I knew these people’s stories. Very touching.
In Holland there is a foundation that takes beautiful pictures of very ill, dying and dead children. The pictures are very beautiful; you see parents holding their deceased baby, but the picture looks like any other photo of proud parents with their newborn. These pictures help parents cope with their loss. http://www.makeamemory.nl. So it still happens and it’s not out of date and it’s not gross.
this remembers me of the others…
“The Others”
No, the “Other” others.
I didn’t even know this existed until I saw this.
Little bit morbid but interesting!
ihasasadcat.jpg
Until fairly recently (maybe a generation ago?) Russian Mennonites used to take photos at the funeral. I don’t think they generally took pictures of the deceased, or at least they were in the coffin at the time. However, like Geekgirl mentioned, it was used for family photos. As a refugee culture people were far-flung, and there might not be a lot of other occasions to get everyone together. And the pictures were then sent to the relatives who couldn’t make it to the funeral.
Yes, it’s true. My grandmother is Russian menonite, and shes 80 years old.
She threw all those very old pictures out! I will never forget one. A man lying in his coffin, his face discoloured… Half of it was black. Like I said before, why do you want to remember someone like that?
I’m a total history buff and love this kind of thing, but WHY would you put this topic on a humor site? That seems really insulting to me, it takes it all out of context and almost dares people to find the humor in it. Not a good choice.
After I saw these photos, I cried and thought about having to do this nowadays. the middle one got me the most as I have two children. I could never do that now adays. I was also intrigued. I looked up victorian post mortem photos on google and a lot of them are of children who appear to be sleeping. Tears filled my eyes just thinking about what the families had to go through. Annie said it the best. Whoever thinks these are creapy, have no sense of history and how things used to be. A lot of the time this was the only photo taken of them. I also agree with Pooba. This should not have been posted on a humor site.
My family has old photographs of relatives that died a long time ago, including a still-born baby sister who would have been 55 years of age. I thought they were creepy as a kid, but now I understand. I’ve also come to realize that our society is loosing touch with the handling and mourning of their dead. Fewer memorials, funerals, wakes, etc. are taking place. People don’t talk about death openly like people did before. Even the medical establishment is saying that one should not show signs of grieving after 2 weeks! Geez! It’s part of life and it also reminds us of how fragile life can be.
Memorial photography, memorial jewlery, etc. gave families great comfort in a time of horrific deathrates, especially for children, due to diseases with no vaccines or antibiotics available.
People now collect these photos and they are available in the public domain.
What I find extremely disturbing and horrific is to find these photos on this website with the logo in the bottom corner. Extremely disrespectful and very, very poor taste.
I never comment here but I wanted to say that I’m glad someone mentioned Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep. A close friend’s daughter was stillborn a little over a year ago, and the organization sent a photographer to her to take pictures of the birth (by her wish) and pictures of her daughter with the family after she was born. During a time that was full of pain for her and her family, the photographer was respectful and understanding and it did my friend a world of good to have someone affirm that her daughter was a beautiful baby and someone to be remembered.
That second image is too much. The look on the father’s face and knowing that this the only photo of them as a family and their children are dead in the picture. I actually broke down.
Why would you want a photograph of your dead relative/baby to “remember them by”?
You wan’t to remember them as a stiff, dead corpse? Use your minds eye, and your imagination! You can look at them in colour then, and you can see them wherever you want! You can see them laughing and alive in your mind! THAT’S what you should want to remember.
And by the way! The Victorians were notorious for having “no feelings”, all that stiff upper lip nonsense. It just figures they would want a picture of a dead person.
The first two photos are not real. They are from the DVD extras of a movie.. The Haunting in Connecticut, perhaps. I know this because I am the one who captured them from the DVD and uploaded them.
The third appears to be a genuine 1860′s tintype.
The website Thanatos.net has thousands of genuine 19th Century death photos. I highly recommended it.