MEMENTO Mori
Inside the disturbing world of Victorian post-mortem photography
While many things in life are unknown, an unfortunate certainty is its inevitable end. Throughout history, different cultures and societies have had their own unique approaches to this grim subject.
The Ancient Egyptians, for example, had complex burial rituals, while during the medieval period religious thought, preoccupied with visions of heaven and hell, dominated much of western Europe. But perhaps one of the most interesting and peculiar cultures through which to examine our relationship with death is that of the Victorians. They were obsessed with the spirit world, ghosts and funeral culture. One of the most bizarre ways they demonstrated this was through the new art of post-mortem photography, which is literally what it sounds like: a photograph taken of someone after they’ve died. These photographs were a sensation in the latter half of the 19th century in Europe, the USA and Great Britain.
For context, however, it’s first important to delve a little deeper into the Victorian attitude towards death and explore some of their customs surrounding funerals. In the 19th century, in both Great Britain and the USA, death was a highly ritualised event, especially for the woman of the household. After the death of her husband, a widow was expected to be in ‘deep mourning’ for a year and then spend a second in ‘half mourning’. This strict rule meant that she was be expected to wear only black, which represented her grief and sadness. Of course, she wasn’t allowed to wear just any old kind of black: the dresses were often made of crepe or non-reflective silk and adorned with very little jewellery. Perhaps most distressingly, during the first year a widow was expected to be in strict isolation and could not receive visitors to the home or attend public events, except church. During half mourning, visitors were allowed and the widow could wear some trim on her black attire. Such was the familiarity of death to the Victorian woman that they would often make their own shroud, including them in the wedding dowry.
How exactly does this concern photographing dead people? Photography was at this time a new and exciting medium, and offered a permanent memento of an individual. This was the period in which people wore lockets and made jewellery or even wreaths from the hair of a dead loved one. As a result, mementos were highly sought-after and photography was a new way to obtain one. Indeed, some sources estimate that
photographers were more
likely to record deaths over weddings by some three to one margin. In some areas a post-mortem photography became a practice that went hand-in-hand with a funeral and images were distributed among friends and relatives.
Why was photography such a widely available and popular medium? The story of the mass-market photograph began when Louis-jacques-mandé Daguerre revealed the first successful photographic method, known as ‘Daguerreotype’, in the 1830s. This method was based on the principle of reversing an image, using a silvered copper plate, the resultant image being a combination of silver and mercury resting on this plate. These images were extremely delicate, so much so that the components could even be brushed off. In 1851, however, Frederick Scott Archer’s ‘Wet Collodion Process’ brought a number of advantages that made the medium incredibly popular. Firstly, numerous copies could be made (unlike Daguerrotypes) and secondly the exposure time was less (meaning images could be taken outside). Perhaps most importantly, it was cheap and its success drastically lowered the price of other methods. For example, in the US in 1850 a single Daguerreotype cost only 25 cents. Grieving families who had had no opportunity to obtain an image of their loved one during their lifetime, due to the expensive nature of portraiture, now had an opportunity to do so.
In contemporary times some of these images have seen a resurgence in interest due to the morbid way in which they were composed. While the majority seem to depict the individuals in their coffins or as if they were asleep, some of the more macabre examples have the deceased posed as if they were alive. In these photos the corpse is shown sitting or being propped up by family members. On some websites this has led to games of ‘spot the cadaver’ as people debate over whether an image is a post-mortem photograph or just a particularly dead-eyed model.
As post-mortem photography became a regular and common practice, it’s said that photographers invented new and unique ways in which to pose their ‘models’. While stories abound of ‘posing stands’ used to prop up the dead, research suggests that these were in fact a common occurrence for living models during the period because exposure times were a lot longer.
While the best possible care has been taken in selecting the images here, in some cases it is impossible to tell the authenticity of a post-mortem photograph.
Perhaps the most bizarre method of keeping models still was used on both the living and the dead. Given the long exposure times, taking images of young children was almost impossible due to an infant’s tendency to cry, wriggle and spoil the process in every possible way. Thus an ingenious role was invented, that of the ‘hidden mother’. The baby’s actual mother would be disguised as either cushions or a backdrop and hold the infant. Others were far more obvious, such as using techniques to photographically remove the head of the mother. A sepiatoned image depicting a human-shaped bundle of rags holding a small child can be somewhat creepy, even more so when it’s possible not every child photographed is alive. Although it’s impossible to prove, a small number of examples show infants with what appears to be sunken eyes and possible stitching on their mouth. Naturally, this hidden mother method would both help to pose the dead body and also help to further give the illusion of life due to the sheer number of hidden mother photographs already in circulation.
In Poland the trend for death photography was particularly prevalent, and it was the work of Karol Beyer that garnered
“Photographers were more likely to record deaths over weddings by some three to one”
the most attention. Here, however, post-mortem photography took on a distinctly political role, curiously helping to unify the nation against a greater enemy. In the 1860s Polish antitsarist sentiment had begun to grow and would lead to the so-called ‘January Uprising’ that would begin in 1863 and last until mid-1864. Prior to this event, a protest against the tsar took place in Warsaw in 1861, and on 25 February, as a misguided and viscous means of quelling discontent, the army was given orders to shoot five of the participants. Beyer rushed to photograph the bodies and arranged them in a distinct tableaux, distributing cards of the work across Poland. The result was an incredibly distinctive image that helped create a record of the actions of the Russian military but far more importantly helped unify and consolidate national sentiment against the tsar and in favour of this growing national movement against Russia.
As this suggests, in some cases these photos weren’t even of loved ones and were sold en masse. Victor Hugo, the author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was one of the celebrities who had photos of his body printed on cards and sold to enthusiastic punters. But Hugo wasn’t alone in being immortalised in such a manner and is in illustrious company, including fellow novelist Marcel Proust and painter Gustave Dore. The former was a particularly late example, taken in
1922. Certainly not part of the Victorian trend, this photograph was taken by famed French photographic artist ‘Man Ray’, whose expertise was usually in creating abstract photographs. Through exposing objects to light and using the negative image he created what were called ‘Photograms’ or ‘Rayographs’. The photo of Proust was an altogether different matter and taken at the urging of Ray’s friend Jean Cocteau. Commentating on the photo of Proust, Cocteau stated: “Those who have seen this profile of calm, of order, of plenitude, will never forget the spectacle of an unbelievable recording device come to a stop, becoming an art object: a masterpiece of repose next to a heap of notebooks where our friend’s genius continues to live on like the wristwatch of a dead soldier.”
From a contemporary perspective, one of the most shocking things about post-mortem photography is how many depict children. Throughout the 19th century, the infant mortality rate was distressingly high. As Patricia Jalland points out in her book Death In The Victorian Family, in 1840 the number of deaths per 1,000 births was an average of 154, 148 in 1860, 153 in 1880, and 154 in 1900. This totalled some 100,000 infants dying every year before reaching their first birthday, the causes often being bronchitis, diarrhoea, pneumonia and a variety of other diseases. As Sarah Seaton, author of Childhood & Death In Victorian England, notes: ‘To a 21st century person there are lots of visual mementos (if one is lucky) of a passed loved one. In the Victorian period, photography was still relatively new, complicated and expensive, so photographs, particularly of children, were not often taken. However, it is easy to understand why photographs were taken of deceased loved ones, whether alone or with other family members, as it may be the family’s one and only chance to gain a memento of their precious child.” Perhaps as a result of this, the children were often photographed either with their parents or as part of a family line up, their position dictated by their age. With younger children in particular, some sources state the eyes were painted onto the eyelids in order to better give the appearance of life.
While it’s incredibly easy for a modern audience to look at the photographs shown here and shrink away in disgust or morbid horror, it is important to remember the context within which they were taken. As the Industrial Revolution turned London into an overpopulated metropolis without proper sanitary facilities, cholera outbreaks were a frequent occurrence, firstly in 1831. This was soon followed by outbreaks of influenza in 1837 and typhoid in 1838. Indeed, the Victorian period is full of epidemics that ravaged the population, including the 1889-90 flu epidemic, the recurrence of which would lead to the death of Queen Victoria’s grandson Albert Victor. In fact, Victoria herself is a symbol of the nation’s attitude towards death, choosing to wear black mourning attire after her husband Prince Albert’s passing in 1861 until her own death in 1901. In the Victorian period, death was an everyday fact and people chose not to shy away or hide from it. Post-mortem photography should not be remembered as some horrific ‘fad’ but as a means for mourning families to obtain a precious memento of a lost loved one.