Search results
Dec 8, 2012 · 2. You weren't allowed back into society for the first two years after a death. 3. All clocks were stopped in the house at the exact time of death. 4. Widows wore black for at least four years after the death of a husband but most chose to wear them forever.
Jun 4, 2016 · The advent of snapshots sounded the death knell for the art - as most families would have photographs taken in life. Now, these images of men, women and children stoically containing their grief ...
Oct 27, 2017 · Known as memento mori (which means “remember you must die”), the trend became increasingly popular for a period of time, and even Queen Victoria slept underneath a photo of her dead husband ...
Oct 11, 2021 · By the 1850s, they were three to eight seconds. “When people talk about long exposure, it sounds like people had to wait for half an hour,” Zohn says. “They did not. But an exposure of even ...
- 10 Profiting from The Dead
- 9 Posing Dead Bodies
- 8 Photographing The Eyes of The Murdered
- 7 The New York Morgue
- 6 One Last Picture
- 5 Ghouls and Camera Fiends
- 4 Pinning on Clothing
- 3 Photographing Death Itself
- 2 Diagnosed with Necrophilism
- 1 The Innocence of Babies
A newspaper report published in 1900 detailed a photographer who photographed dead soldiers after US Civil War battles. On one of his grisly adventures, the photographer visited the battlefield at Antietam three days after the eponymous battle, which was considered one of the deadliest days of the Civil War with over 22,000 casualties. The battlefi...
In the late 1800s, a photographer moved to Chicago, hoping to make the big bucks. His dream of big city success was short-lived, and he soon found himself broke and his photography business almost dead. In a desperate effort to drum up business, he started reading the death columns in the newspapers. He then packed up and visited neighbors who had ...
A newspaper article published in 1904 contains a particularly interesting passage: “It has long been supposed by the uninstructed that the eye of, say, a murdered person retains the image of his assailant. Furthermore, it is believed by many that from the dead eye a photograph of the assailant might thus be procured.” It was an intriguing theory fo...
In the late 1800s, after seeing innumerable unidentified bodies go to the New York morgue, the superintendent of the Bellevue hospital “invented” the idea to photograph the unknown dead before they were sent to the “dead house.” By the fall of 1885, there was “a gallery of these pictures numbering over 600.” The negatives were kept safely filed awa...
A woman died on February 8, 1887. She was buried on February 21, but not long after that, her distraught husband wanted her dug back up and photographed. He told his friends about his plans, and his late wife’s mother heard about it. She begged him not to go through with his plan, but the man wouldn’t listen. In early March, the man “with the sexto...
On September 8, 1900, Galveston, Texas was hit with a hurricane and major flooding, an event which became known as the Galveston Horror. It is estimated that anywhere between 6,000 and 12,000 lives were lost during and after the massive storm. Often, tragedy can bring out the worst in people. The military was brought in to clean up and restore orde...
As posthumous photography became a growing trend in the late 1800s, articles about photographing dead people flooded the newspapers. It was a morbid obsession that made people want to read about the secrets of the trade, and those who could afford the equipment found that they could earn quite a lot of cash posing dead people for photographs. In 18...
The idea of photographing death itself sounds like science fiction, but it was more likely a bunch of complicated baloney. In 1897, it was reported that a professor “succeeded in photographing death,” or more aptly, the moment when life left the body, using something he called “Kritik rays.” The professor went on to say, “The Kritik raysare directe...
In 1911, newspapers everywhere exploded with the story of the infamous poisoner Louise Vermilya. Because no one was able to fully believe that a healthy, sane woman would murder eight family members and one policeman, doctors tried to discover the root cause for her crimes. She was examined by several different physicians to find out what could be ...
One of the most horrible experiences that parents can face is the loss of a child. In 1900, roughly 165 out of 1,000 infants died in their first year of life. Compare that to seven deaths per 1,000 in 1997. The loss of such young life was beyond horrible, and parents sought to cope with the loss in any way possible. One way to deal with the pain wa...
Post-mortem photography was also common in the nineteenth century when "death occurred in the home and was quite an ordinary part of life. Memento mori photography was a trend that came to be in the mid-19th century, which translates to "remember you must die," was supported by photographers being commissioned at the time by families to photograph their deceased loved ones as a way to ...
Mar 15, 2020 · Post-Mortem Photography was done in preparation to have a printed photo of your dead family member to proudly display in the home. In the unfortunate event of a loved one dying, it would be considered unusual, or perhaps even frowned upon, if we were to take a photograph of their body or face. However, post-mortem photography was once a common ...
