I watched the movie The Others the other day, and was intrigued by the 19th (and very early 20th) century custom of photographing deceased family members, so I've been reading up on it on the 'net.
Early death was much more common in those days, I read one place that 1 in 5 children did not survive to see their tenth birthday, and photography was expensive, especially for the common man. A post mortem picture was often the first and last time a child had his photograph taken, so that the family had a picture to remember them by. The deceased were often placed so that they looked alive, either sleeping, sitting up or other poses. Sometimes eyes were painted on to make them look more alive.
Here are two links to sites with pictures :
http://www.boatswain.nl/index.html (Warning : Horrible background music!)
http://thanatos.net/ (Requires registration to view pictures; also has pictures of death masks and x-ray pictures of humans and animals)
These aren't gory sites, both are tasteful (except for the music on the first one), respectful, well done and treat the subject matter seriously.
So if you want to take a look at a fascinating and, from a 21st century viewpoint, macabre custom, I reccomend browsing these two sites. And be glad you live in a century where child birth and disease is not as fatal as it was for our close ancestors, and that we live in a part of the world where we can take advantage of it. Thank Ed for modern medicine.
Memento Mori.
Early death was much more common in those days, I read one place that 1 in 5 children did not survive to see their tenth birthday, and photography was expensive, especially for the common man. A post mortem picture was often the first and last time a child had his photograph taken, so that the family had a picture to remember them by. The deceased were often placed so that they looked alive, either sleeping, sitting up or other poses. Sometimes eyes were painted on to make them look more alive.
Here are two links to sites with pictures :
http://www.boatswain.nl/index.html (Warning : Horrible background music!)
http://thanatos.net/ (Requires registration to view pictures; also has pictures of death masks and x-ray pictures of humans and animals)
These aren't gory sites, both are tasteful (except for the music on the first one), respectful, well done and treat the subject matter seriously.
So if you want to take a look at a fascinating and, from a 21st century viewpoint, macabre custom, I reccomend browsing these two sites. And be glad you live in a century where child birth and disease is not as fatal as it was for our close ancestors, and that we live in a part of the world where we can take advantage of it. Thank Ed for modern medicine.
Memento Mori.
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