Post-Mortem Photography

It was the Victorian era - 1839, to be specific. A French man named Louis Daguerre had just invented the daguerreotype, which was the first major photography process. People all over the world could now have actual images of their loved ones, rather than expensive portraits done by artists. Hiring a photographer, however, was still not cheap. Most sessions were requested by well-to-do families. The others were reserved for the dead.

Allow me to explain: in this era, very few people lived to an old age. Life expectancy was short, and mortality rates were high. Most deaths were natural, that is a combination of disease and poor medical care. One could feel under the weather in the morning and be dead by the fall of night. If you scour postmortems, you will find that they are more often than not images of children. This is not necessarily because more children than adults died in this time period. When a child died (and often it lost more than one within a relatively short time), the family was devastated. The parents would find the money to have a picture made of their son or daughter, not as a reminder of death, but because they likely had no other pictures. If the death was slow and expected, an appointment could be made ahead of time. Some "postmortems" are actually of the dying, not of the dead. In cases where a photographer showed up immediately after the death, the deceased tends to look somewhat as s/he did in life. Unfortunately, this was not the norm. It could take weeks for a photographer to show up, and by then, the body's decomposition process would have started.

There are tell-tale signs to watch for when determining whether a photograph is post-mortem or not. In early photography, a person had to remain perfectly still for extensive lengths so that the picture could be taken. In photographs of the living, there are almost always "blurs" near the hands or the head, where the person moved slightly during the process. Post-mortems will have none, unless they are taken with the living. If the eyes are open, they will look glassy and distant, as if there is no soul behind them. They may not be open entirely, but there will be no blurring as a result of blinking. Rigidity is also something to watch for. If the body is bizarrely arranged or seems stiff (especially in the fingers), this is probably because the person is dead and rigor mortis has set in. Keep in mind that people were often propped or stood up. There are some photographs that show the dead being held by stands and positioned to look alive. If you can see a stand, pillows, or someone holding up the body, the person is likely deceased. Once decomposition has begun to set in, the eyes will sink into the face. Other facial features may do the same, but it is most noticeable with the eyes. The fingernails and lips will turn black, in time. This seems to occur most often in pictures of babies - possibly because of their smaller size. If the skin looks discolored, it may be a sign of death when accompanied by other features.


























And now for the best part -- some of my favorites. There are two sites that I scour frequently. The first, and what I consider to be the Internet's best collection, can be found here:
http://www.antiquephotoalbum.nl/pmgalleries/index.php You have to register, but there is no spam involved, and the pictures are well worth it. I highly recommend it.
The second, which hasn't been updated recently, but has pages upon pages of pictures is:
http://www.paulfrecker.com/collections.cfm?pagetype=library&typeID=1
I'm also including the link to a Flickr group that I used to visit often before I found my other two websites. The last time I checked, it had moved on to modern post-mortems, which I don't care much for. But I liked some of the older pictures, so here it is:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/postmortem/pool/