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| Victorian memento mori | | |
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I find this photo very interesting and terribly sad, as well as peculiar - on the one hand it's a little ghastly, yet on the other it's a poignant rminder of a little girl who was so obviously loved. (Did i mention she's dead?) The idea of photgraphing one's dead relative is one that has been (thankfully) lost over time. The ease of photography we all enjoy today makes it easy to capture a person whilst living, happy memories recorded while they happen. But in the Victorian times when daguerrotypes were brand new, often the only photo a family of a dead loved one (especially a child, given the high rate of infant mortality) had would ahve been taken post mortem.
i suppose it's just another way of remembering and coping with loss, thinngs which we all have to deal with. To them it wasn't as odd and macabre as it seems to us, it was an expression of loving memory (especially in the above image- you can just imagine the little girls's parents arranging her favourite dolls to sleep with her for eternity :( ) as well as a reminder of one's own mortality.
Actually people still photograph the dead. My great aunt died about three or four years ago and my cousins took pictures of her in the coffin. It is a way to perserve memories of the dead. While you may consider it ghastly it helps some people grieve to know they have a memory.
ReplyDeleteAlso post mortem photography is highly prevelant with families who have stillborn children, or whose children die shortly after being born. Many parents fear forgetting what their child looked like, and never want to. Others put the photographs away, taking comfort in knowing they can take a picture out once they are emotionally able.
It is disturbing to some, but for many it is simply a way to deal with death.