(Editor's note: Keeping in step with our series of "creepy" stories heading into Halloween that we started with the Bobby Joe Burns saga, this will be the second in the series that we will run over the next eleven days.)
Early photographers used the slogan “Secure the shadow, ere the substance fades.”
This may seem ominous in today's times but in the Victorian era it was common.
In Victorian times the deceased usually looked healthy as death usually came more suddenly in a time before antibiotics and medications that prolonged life.
Posthumous portraiture paved the way for Postmortem photography. Posthumous portraiture began when wealthy Europeans had paintings done of their loved ones and it was very expensive but after the invention of the photograph it became affordable to people.
Some photographers advertised postmortem photographs for as little as three cents. They would come to your home and preferred to do the photograph within the first 24 hours of the subjects death.
Early photos were sometimes referred to as “mirrors with memories,” it was one way of preserving the memory of a family member and they were kept as keepsakes, given out to family, placed in frames and displayed in homes or even placed in a locket.
The photographs were usually taken in the coffin or if it were a child they were often taken in the laps of the mother so she could hold the child up. The photographer often painted open eyes over the photograph so the persons stare looked less
blank. Most people would never display this type of photograph in their homes today but the Victorians did not see death as anything unnatural and often wanted a final photograph to memorialize their loved ones passing.
Next time you go through an old box of family photographs, look closely at the subjects.
Here are a few that are often used as examples:
