Comments on: Accept Your Fate: Post-mortem Ebay Finds

By: Linkage Sunday 030509 «

Linkage Sunday 030509 « — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:27:34 +0000

[...] Article on creepy victorian postmortem photos found on ebay. Interesting view on death in the Victorian Era. Accept your Fate:Postmorten Photos. [...]

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:14:04 +0000

The boy is definitely not a post-mortem… but as odd of a scene as it is, the girl being post-mortem IS a possibility in my opinion.

Super enlargement here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thanatosdotnet/3361993290/

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:01:53 +0000

Both are definitely not post mortem photographs.

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:25:32 +0000

While I am definitely not an expert on the subject, I do believe that neither photo is likely to be a post-mortem (definitely not the second one!). However, I do happen to know that the owner of The Thanatos Archive (www.thanatos.net) was the winner of the photo of the little girl.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:38:14 +0000

Another wonderful post Zo, thank you!

I’ve always been fascinated by this type of image. My mother has a plaster death mask of my great, great grandfather Vincent, who died as an infant. Quite eerie and beautiful. There is something so poignant about the fact that a cast of his face has been carefully handed down through the generations. Last year, I made a special case to protect it, so that he can sleep in a glass-topped box, like Snow White…

Also, I must mention that there is a marvelous article on post-mortem photography coming up in the next issue of SHOTS Magazine! I’ll send you ladies more info on it soon…

In case you haven’t seen it, Shots is a beautiful magazine of fine art photography, helmed by Jared’s brother, Russell Joslin. I’ve long thought that it would be of interest to Coilhouse readers. There are so many talented artists here, and it’s an amazing opportunity for photographers, both emerging and established, to be published! http://www.shotsmag.com/

Mer: You have a point, I also wondered about the casual pose…

By: Jerem Morrow

Jerem Morrow — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:20:21 +0000

I was literally JUST having a conversation about this yesterday with a friend who’d never heard of the practice! In fact, one of the first pics I found, was the first here, at top.

Erin summed up what I was gonna say.

p.s. Rue Morgue magazine had a swell write-up on the subject in issue #71.

THE LOST ART OF DEATH PHOTOGRAPHY
Dr. Stanley Burns, an expert on the esoteric art of taking portraits of the deceased, exposes the birth, life and afterlife of post-mortem photography.
by Last Chance Lance

By: MissSpite

MissSpite — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:26:53 +0000

Those Eugenio Recuenco pieces where stunning.

By: Mer

Mer — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:06:35 +0000

Fascinating subject matter, Z! You know what a sucker I am for ghostly vintage num nums. :)

Taking a closer look, I’m not convinced that the girl isn’t just playing possum in that first photo, which isn’t only unusual in terms of the amount of people; it’s the smiles, the relaxed posture of the woman on the far right, the other woman grinning with her hands in her pockets, the kitten, the fresh fruit lying two feet away on a white cloth. It’s a really candid, casual shot, which is virtually unheard of in nineteenth century funereal portraiture (unless you’re talking Wild West type stuff). While I realize the Victorians had a more intimate, earthy relationship with death, I have trouble believing that an entire parlor full of family members would be ghoulish enough to grin over a little girl’s corpse like that. Unless she was just a horrendous brat!

But another thing, look at how relaxed the girl’s position is on the pillow. She’s curled up on her side with her legs splayed casually. Rigor mortis usually starts starts setting in about 3 hours after someone is dead… full rigor mortis occurs within 12 hours, and then doesn’t go away for several days, by which time an untreated body is visibly bloated and discolored. By then, the body would have been laid out flat in a coffin, or already in the ground. So… if she’s not just playing dead, the body’s fresh and her entire family consists of sociopaths. OR it’s several days dead, and her family just looooves the smell of a gassy, decomposing, yet deceptively fresh-looking body. YUMMERS. LETS EAT!

On the other hand, the look on that 7 year old girl’s face in the second photo is heartbreaking. Who knows… that might very well have been the only picture she ever had taken with her brother.

One of the most beautiful, sad daguerrotypes I’ve ever seen (I’m pretty sure it’s a funeral portrait, but not entirely):

By: girl x

girl x — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:25:53 +0000

i remember learning about this in AP english in highschool… momento mori… i’ve heard that it was very chic to have picnics in graveyards up until the 1930’s or so.

By: Sterlingspider

Sterlingspider — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:04:33 +0000

It’s particularly fascinating to read letters written by Victorian women, both during their pregnancies and during their children’s earliest years. We have the wonderful luxury of viewing childhood and childbirth death as rare and shocking occurrences whereas these people lived with it nearly as an expectation.
Death is a constant underlying presence in so many of these correspondences and so often they quietly but openly acknowledge that these letters may be the last words their friends and families will ever even hear from them, that any visit to them or their children may be the last one.
It’s a heartbreaking but utterly necessary filter to understanding the genteel morbidity of Victorian culture.