A photographer who photographed dead people. Photos with the dead - terrible traditions

After the invention of the daguerreotype at the end of the 19th century, photography began to rapidly replace expensive and not particularly realistic painting. During times victorian era near family photos Very strange customs have developed. Probably the strangest of them was the tradition of taking photographs. dead people as if alive.

For modern man this practice seems strange and scary. We are afraid of any physical contact with the dead, we hide the fact of the death of loved ones from our children, fearing to traumatize their soul or scare them. And in general, the dead inspire us with horror and fear. But it was not always so.

Photos of dead people from the 19th century

In the 19th century, no one feared the dead. They were buried next to the house in which they lived during their lifetime. An evening walk to the family cemetery did not inspire horror, but rather calm.

When a person died, he stayed in his home for some time. They talked to him as if he were alive, they touched him and dressed him, and this did not frighten anyone.

The fashion for post-mortem photographs, which began in the Victorian era, finally degenerated during the bloodiest war of the 20th century.

Photos of dead children from the 19th century

Infant mortality in the 19th century was very high. Often, postmortem photographs of children were the only reminder of the deceased child.

Quite often, living children were photographed together with deceased sister or brother. To add realism, the eyes of the dead were opened. To give a lively look, blush and whitewash were actively used. A bouquet of fresh flowers was placed in the hands. They dressed the deceased in the best clothes.

Sometimes dead children were photographed as if they were asleep.

Posthumous photos of girls in a coffin

This boy seemingly just stands in the middle of the room and reluctantly poses for the photographer. In fact, he died a long time ago, and an invisible hand is holding his head from under the curtain.

There was also a separate fashion for photographing the dead in a standing position. To do this, special metal holders were used, invisible in the photograph.
The photo shows a dead girl
This photograph shows John O'Connor two years after his death. Five days later he was buried.

Another oddity of the Victorian era was.

History of postmortem photographs

Taking pictures of dead children. To a normal person It wouldn't even occur to me. Today this is wild, but 50 years ago it was normal. Mothers treasured cards with dead babies as their most precious possessions. And now, from these gloomy photographs, we can trace the evolution of man’s attitude towards death and towards his loved ones.

Children die slower than old people

A strange and, at first glance, creepy custom - photographing the dead - originated in Europe, and then came to Russia, in the middle of the 19th century, simultaneously with the advent of photography. Residents began filming their deceased relatives. In essence, this was a new manifestation of the tradition of painting posthumous portraits of loved ones and removing plaster masks from the faces of the deceased. However, portraits and masks were expensive pleasure, while photography became more and more accessible to all segments of the population.

- I saw one of the early photographs of a deceased child dating back to the 1840s,- said St. Petersburg photography historian Igor Lebedev.

In parallel, another direction developed post-mortem photography- crime filming. Photographers went to crime scenes and photographed the dead for the police. Wherein we're talking about not only about specific filming, when they recorded how the body lay or where the bullet hit. The dead were also carefully placed on the bed and removed. This was the case, for example, with the Parsons family. The father, mother and three young children were killed and their bodies were thrown into the water. When they were discovered, they gathered everyone together and took one last family photo. However, it shows that everyone filmed is already dead.

When they photographed small children who died in their families from illnesses, they very often made them look like they were alive. They were filmed with their favorite toys and even sat on chairs. The kids were dressed in the most elegant dresses and decorated with flowers.

Often parents even tried to smile while holding hands of the dead babies, as if they had just casually walked into a photo salon with them during their first walk. Children sometimes had pupils drawn on their photographs to emulate open eyes.

There were even photos in which the dead were captured with pets - birds, cats, dogs. What is especially striking is that the dead and living sons and daughters were filmed together. For example, there is a shot where twin girls are sitting on the sofa - one dead, the other alive.

the girl on the left is dead

- There are quite a lot of photographs of children also because the infant mortality rate in those years was very high compared to today,- explains Lebedev, - In addition, a deceased child looks alive longer, while old people quickly change, the skin sags, and the decomposition of the flesh begins.

Books of the Dead

Already in the 20-30s of the 20th century, scientists began to study the phenomenon of post-mortem photographs. Then the expression “photography is a little death” appeared. With a click of the camera, the photographer seemed to kill the moment and at the same time make it eternally alive. This is how the dead remained forever alive on the cards, who were filmed in their usual surroundings - reading newspapers, in their favorite chair, with friends and family. The bravest ones even took pictures of the dead looking in the mirror. A series of such photographs formed a book of the dead. During the days of epidemics, entire family albums were collected in these gloomy books.

- They were collected mainly by women. They became the guardians of not only the hearth, but also the history of the family,- says Igor Lebedev.

It is, of course, creepy to view such collections as a stranger. But for the relatives these were sweet reminders.

There are several explanations for why these photographs were taken. First of all, it was fashion - people simply copied each other's behavior.

In addition, personal chronicles could be kept from photographs. The photographer was invited to every significant event in a person’s life - his birth, holidays, when buying a house or car, to a wedding, at the birth of his children. AND post-mortem photograph became the logical conclusion in this series.

But the main thing is that in this way people tried to capture the last moment loved one. In the 19th–20th centuries. family meant much more than it does today. That’s why there were traditions of keeping hair and pieces of clothing of the dead.

And in the case of children, these could be their only photographs. Parents did not always have time to remove them during their lifetime. And so they had at least something left to remember.

- And, by the way, when relatives were asked about such photographs, they always remembered not the death of the deceased, not his torment, not their grief, but what he was like during his lifetime. We remembered only the good things- Lebedev said.

the girl in the center is dead

Today it is already difficult to understand such a way to immortalize loved ones - after all, these days, when almost everyone has a “soap box,” hundreds of his cards accumulate over a person’s life. So there is no need to do post-mortems.

The grave replaced the person

In Europeanized St. Petersburg this tradition was more developed than on the periphery. In villages, filming has always been an event comparable in importance to a funeral. Often these two events were combined. The whole village gathered for the funeral photography. At the same time, the coffin with the deceased was put in the foreground, and those gathered for the funeral lined up behind it.

- The result was a juxtaposition of the dead and the living, the dead man always looked at the sky, those gathered around - directly into the camera,- notes historian Igor Lebedev.

Almost all funeral homes employed photographers. These were masters who simply did their job.

- Professionals always have the question: “Who else besides me?” Follow ethics and refuse to photograph the dead, or press the button and leave the photo with your family loved one, - explains Lebedev.

Perhaps this is why we - not professionals - do not understand how to film the dead. Only Lenin in the mausoleum is an exception.

It is known that the tradition of filming dead children has been preserved in our country even in post-war years. Post-mortem photographs began to disappear only in the 60s. Then they started gluing photographs onto tombstones. And in those years one could see rare posthumous cards on crosses and steles.

- Almost every family in Russia had such photographs, but then they began to destroy them, now you can hardly find them,- Igor Lebedev is sure.

They tore up and threw away pictures of the dead because they no longer remembered these people, and family values ​​- such as the memory of the family - were becoming a thing of the past. The external manifestation of intimacy has become more significant. That is why in the Soviet Union there appeared unique phenomenon- filming a funeral. If in other countries they were limited to one or two mourning shots, then in our country they filmed the entire procession. And if at another time a person would never agree to show his tears, then here it was permissible - so that everyone could see how saddened he was by what happened.

- Photographs of the dead man were replaced by photographs of the grave. People could take pictures at the cross and at the same time hug it, smile, as if they were standing with the deceased,- historian Igor Lebedev spoke about the transformation of traditions.

Photographers still work in cemeteries during funerals. Although this custom is gradually dying out.

The genre of post-mortem photography was very popular in the 19th century, when a camera was still a rare and expensive pleasure (so for many, a post-mortem photograph was the first and only). To take a photograph, you had to pose for a long time next to the deceased, who, by the way, was most often seated in the frame as if he were alive. It seems strange, but think about it: post-mortem photography loved one- the only thing his family had left to remember him.

Of course, first of all, the relatives wanted to keep something in memory of the deceased. Now we don’t have such a need: we take a lot of photographs and shoot videos. And then people did not have such an opportunity, so they saved up so that, even after death, they could take a photograph of their beloved relative as a keepsake and put it in the family album. Most often, inconsolable mothers ordered photographs of their deceased children.

At that time, one photograph took from 30 seconds to 15 minutes, and all this time you had to sit next to the deceased without moving. It must have been difficult - for example, in this photo, the older brothers are standing next to the dead baby in a chair and the little sister is sitting on a chair next to him. Small children too.

Due to the long exposure time, the deceased in the photograph appeared more clearly than the living people around him. Because no matter how hard they try not to move, achieving perfect stillness is impossible.

12. "Memento mori", or "Remember death"

Remember death, remember that you will die, and remember the dead. Perhaps post-mortem photographs were also a kind of reminder that all people are mortal, death is inevitable and there is no need to be afraid of it. This sounds crazy to us, but at that time such sentiments were common.

Most often, post-mortem photographs were ordered when a child died. At that time, infant mortality was very high; there were no vaccinations or antibiotics yet, and children often died in infancy from infectious diseases. Therefore, it was customary to give birth to as many children as possible, because not everyone had a chance to survive. And women often died in childbirth, and post-mortem photographs were also taken for them.

Of course, everyone understood that the person was dead, but in the photograph he should look as alive as possible so that his relatives could remember him like that. The dead were given poses suggesting that they were busy with their favorite activity... or, at least, sleeping. The girl in this photo looks like she fell asleep while reading.

It is impossible to sit a dead body down straight, so someone stood behind him and supported him. Or used some kind of support mechanisms.

The custom of placing the deceased’s favorite thing in the coffin still exists. And then, in post-mortem photographs, their favorite toys and dolls are sure to be next to the children, and their favorite book or other item that they often used is next to the adults.

Since photography was an expensive business, several people who died at one time were often combined into one photograph, so as not to spend money on a separate photograph for each. This photograph shows a mother and her triplets. Unfortunately, both the mother and two of the three children are dead, possibly due to some kind of epidemic.

Post-mortem photographs were not easy to take; they required certain skills and abilities, so they were quite expensive. It was necessary to pay the photographer for the work, reagents, development and printing, and most often the family received one single photograph, which they kept like the apple of their eye.

We know what an obituary in a newspaper is. Usually this short message about the death of a person, indicating the cause of death, without details, and with an expression of condolences. At a time when post-mortem photography flourished, it was common for newspapers to print more detailed obituaries with post-mortem photographs and detailed description death. Moreover, at that time there were no such methods of preserving the dead for a long time as there are now. Then they were buried as quickly as possible, and not everyone had time to come to the funeral. In such cases, a detailed obituary was useful.

Sometimes it was not possible to make a dead person look alive in a photograph, and then it was modified manually by coloring his eyes. This gave such photographs an even more terrible look. The photographs were in black and white, and people often painted red and pink on the dead person's cheeks to give them life.

Sometimes the dead actually look just like the living in photographs. And you can't tell the difference. In this photo, the young man on the right is apparently dead, since he is standing in a simpler pose and there is clearly something behind him that supports him in vertical position. So if you immediately realized that it was him, you are right. But if you decided that the young man on the left is dead, you are also right. There is also a support stand behind it. Yes, there are two dead people in this photo.

Pets are part of the family, and it was the same way back then. So it’s not surprising that someone took post-mortem photographs of their beloved dog or cat for a family album. This, of course, only rich people could afford.

It didn’t matter what condition the deceased was in, the photograph was taken under any circumstances. There are many photographs of people who were burned in a fire or died from diseases that disfigured their appearance. The woman in this photo looks like this only because of cadaveric rot. It's strange that someone would want a photograph of a relative like this, but people could be in complete despair. And some photograph is better than no photograph, right?

06.10.2014

“None of us will get out of here alive,” Jim Morrison, mentioned here, sang about life. And, sad as it may be, you can’t argue with this.

Memento mori (Remember death) in Ancient Rome this phrase was pronounced during the triumphal procession of Roman generals returning victorious. A slave was placed behind the military leader, who was obliged to periodically remind the triumphant that despite his glory, he remained mortal.

This is exactly what all the photographs of celebrities collected here, taken shortly before their death, are about.

Paul Walker

On November 30, 2013, the actor was riding in the passenger seat of his beloved 2005 Porsche Carrera GT, driven by his friend, former racer Roger Rodas. As the police said, the driver of the Porsche lost control, and the car crashed into a tree at high speed, then into a lamppost and caught fire.

Freddie Mercury

This is the last picture of Freddie Mercury in 1991 before he died of bronchial pneumonia as a result of AIDS.

Tupac Shakur

Rapper Tupac Shakur sits with his manager Suge Knight before he was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting on September 13, 1996.

Vladimir Lenin

One of the last photographs of the sick “leader of the world proletariat” in Gorki, in December 1923. Lenin died in January 1924.

Adolf Gitler

This photograph of Adolf Hitler was taken approximately two days before his death. He emerged from his Berlin bunker to assess the damage caused by the shell. Hitler committed suicide between 15:15 and 15:30 on April 30, 1945.

Abraham Lincoln

This photograph was taken shortly before the assassination of the US President in 1865 and was found in the photo album of General Ulysses Grant.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein poses for a photograph in March 1955 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. A month later he died of an aortic aneurysm.

Amy Winehouse

A week before the death of the British singer Amy Winehouse On July 23, 2011, she was seen walking near her home in North London.

Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger smiles on the set of his last movie"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" shortly before his painkiller overdose in January 2008.

John Lennon

The man who shot John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, is seen on the right in last picture musician in December 1980. He asked for an autograph.

Anne Frank

This is presumably last photo Anne Frank. She stands with her sister Margot in early or mid-1942. The photo was taken before her family was discovered and arrested by the Nazis in Holland on August 4, 1944.

Bob Marley

Musician Bob Marley speaks with family in Munich, Germany, before his death from cancer on May 11, 1981.

Challenger crew

This is the last photo of the seven-person crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded 73 seconds into flight on January 28, 1986.

Jimi Hendrix

Guitarist Jimi Hendrix poses with his favorite instrument, the Black Betty guitar, the day before his death on September 8, 1970.

Yuri Gagarin

On March 27, 1968, Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, the first person on planet Earth to be in space, died in a plane crash while performing a training flight on a MiG-15UTI aircraft under the control of instructor pilot V.S. Seryogin, near the village of Novoselovo, Kirzhach district Vladimir region. This photo was taken just in the cockpit of an airplane for training flights in the spring of 1968.

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley returns to Graceland on August 16, 1977, after visiting the dentist. Died on the same day.

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe visited Frank Sinatra and Buddy Greco the weekend before her death on August 5, 1962.

Mahatma Gandhi

The last photograph of the ideologist of the movement for Indian independence from Great Britain. Five months before Gandhi's death, India peacefully achieved national independence. On the evening of January 30, 1948, he went out onto the lawn in front of the house. As usual, the gathered crowd loudly greeted the “father of the nation.” Adherents of his teachings rushed to their idol, trying, according to ancient custom, to touch the Mahatma’s feet. Taking advantage of the confusion, Nathuram Godse, among other worshipers, approached Gandhi and shot him three times. This moment is captured in the photo.

Keith Moon

Drummer The group Who Keith Moon died on September 7, 1978 from an overdose of a drug prescribed to combat alcoholism. This is his last dinner with Paul McCartney and his then-wife Linda.

Martin Luther King

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, a fighter for the rights of people of color in the United States, stood on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis. A shot rang out. The bullet traveled through King's right cheek to his spinal cord and exited through his shoulder. This photo was taken on April 3rd. Martin Luther stands in approximately the same place where he will be killed a day later.

Margaret Thatcher

The last public photograph of the first woman to serve as a European head of state. Thatcher died in the early hours of April 8, 2013, aged 88, at the Ritz Hotel in central London, where she had been staying since being discharged from hospital at the end of 2012. It was at the exit from the hotel that this photo was taken.

Kurt Cobain

This photograph of Kurt Cobain was taken shortly before the Nirvana leader's suicide in 1994.

Princess Diana

Princess Diana in the back seat looks back at the paparazzi in Paris. Seconds after this, her Mercedes crashed into a pole in a tunnel on August 31, 1997.

Mark Twain

Last thing famous photo American writer Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, in April 1910.

"Titanic"

Last known photograph of the Titanic ship , who died in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean.

Robert Kennedy

He ran for the presidency of the United States after the death of his older brother John Kennedy. Shot to death in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel (pictured) after delivering a speech celebrating his victory in the California primary. Died June 6, 1968.

Sharon Tate

These photos of Roman Polanski's pregnant wife were taken shortly before she was brutally murdered by Charles Manson on August 9, 1969.

George Harrison

Since the mid-nineties, one of the Beatles struggled with serious illness. In 1997 he had his cancerous tumor larynx and part of the lung, and in May 2001 he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor that could not be operated on. Harrison died on November 29, 2001 at Paul McCartney's house in Los Angeles, where this photo was taken.

Michael Jackson

The last public photo of singer Michael Jackson. In March 2009, Michael announced that he was going to give the last series of concerts in London called "This Is It Tour". The concerts were supposed to begin on July 13, 2009. The tour never took place; Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 as a result of a drug overdose.

Steve Jobs

After eight years of fighting the disease, in 2011 Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer. Above is the last one famous photograph Jobs, taken on September 27, 2011 near his home. The photo shows Steve Jobs in a chair with his wife Lauren and son Reed.

Jim Morrison

The Doors frontman Jim Morrison and his girlfriend Pamela Courson pose in Paris in 1971. Five days later he was found dead in the bathtub.

Ayrton Senna

Brazilian racing driver, three-time Formula 1 world champion (1988, 1990 and 1991) 15 minutes before his death in 1994 in an accident at the San Marino Grand Prix.

Adelia wrote:

I don’t know, but I believe that people close to you should be remembered alive, and not in a coffin.

Exactly...

In the burial catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo in Sicily, lies an amazing two-year-old girl, Rosalia Lombardo, who died of pneumonia on December 6, 1920.

Rosalia's father, General Mario Lombardo, who was grieving her death, turned to the famous embalmer Dr. Alfredo Salafia with a request to preserve his daughter's body from decay. The burial of Rosalia Lombardo was one of the last in the history of the catacombs. Thanks to Salafiya's embalming technique, Rosalia's body has survived almost unchanged to this day. Not only the soft tissues of the girl’s face remained incorruptible, but also her eyeballs, eyelashes, hair, as well as her brain and internal organs.

Since even scientists consider this an incredible miracle, all this time the body of the deceased Rosalia was under...

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Remember “The Others” with Nicole Kidman, that episode where she looks at photographs of dead people? This is not the director’s fantasy at all. The tradition of taking postmortem photographs (postmortem), often opening the eyes of the dead and sitting them in poses familiar to the living, existed for quite a long time. It was believed that it was in posthumous photography that the soul of the deceased would now live. Postmortems are rarely shown to outsiders, but they exist, and their number numbers in the thousands...

Horrible! Not at all. For a long time, plaster masks were removed from the dead and portraits were made. Of course, this was not available to everyone. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, which were small photographs on polished silver. Not very rich people could afford a daguerreotype, but only once, namely after death...

The tradition of posthumous photographs developed in Victorian England, from there it spread to the USA and other countries, including Russia...

Exist...

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This selection is not for the impressionable!

It is, of course, creepy to view such collections as a stranger. But for the relatives these were sweet reminders. There are several explanations for why these photographs were taken. First of all, it was fashion - people simply copied each other's behavior.

In addition, personal chronicles could be kept from photographs. The photographer was invited to every significant event in a person’s life - his birth, holidays, when buying a house or car, to a wedding, at the birth of his children. And the post-mortem photograph became the logical conclusion to this...

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Taking pictures of dead children. This would never even occur to a normal person. Today this is wild, but 50 years ago it was normal. Mothers treasured cards with dead babies as their most precious possessions. And now, from these gloomy photographs, we can trace the evolution of man’s attitude towards death and towards his loved ones.

Children die slower than old people

A strange and, at first glance, creepy custom - photographing the dead - originated in Europe, and then came to Russia, in the middle of the 19th century, simultaneously with the advent of photography. Residents began filming their deceased relatives. In essence, this was a new manifestation of the tradition of painting posthumous portraits of loved ones and removing plaster masks from the faces of the deceased. However, portraits and masks were expensive, while photography became more and more accessible to all segments of the population.

“I saw one of the early photographs of a deceased child, dating back to the 1840s,” said St. Petersburg photography historian Igor...

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Post-mortem photographs from the Victorian era.

When it comes to the Victorian era, most people think of horse-drawn carriages, ladies' corsets and Charles Dickens. And hardly anyone thinks about what the people of that era did when they came to the funeral. This may seem shocking today, but at that time, when someone died in the house, the first person the family of the unfortunate person turned to was a photographer. Our review contains posthumous photographs of people who lived in the Victorian era.

The sister and brothers next to the dead child look very frightened.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Victorians had new tradition– take photographs of dead people. Historians believe that at that time the services of a photographer were very expensive, and not many could afford such luxury during their lifetime. And only death and desire to do in last time something meaningful related to a loved one made them shell out for a photo. It is known that in the 1860s a photograph cost about 7...

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After the invention of the daguerreotype at the end of the 19th century, photography began to rapidly replace expensive and not particularly realistic painting. During the Victorian era, very strange customs developed around family photos. Probably the strangest of them was the tradition of taking photographs of dead people as if they were alive.

For a modern person, this practice seems strange and frightening. We are afraid of any physical contact with the dead, we hide the fact of the death of loved ones from our children, fearing to traumatize their soul or scare them. And in general, the dead inspire us with horror and fear. But it was not always so.

Photos of dead people from the 19th century

In the 19th century, no one feared the dead. They were buried next to the house in which they lived during their lifetime. An evening walk to the family cemetery did not inspire horror, but rather calm.

When a person died, he stayed in his home for some time. They talked to him as if he were alive, they touched him and dressed him, and this did not frighten anyone.

Started in...

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nothing

There are no prohibitions on photographing the dead, unlike the taboo on photographing sleeping people. What happened to your friends is just a coincidence.

But you can read how and why they photographed the dead in this article (if you have access to an external device, look at the photographs, they are impressive :-):
http://medinfo.ua/analitic/00014e19108d4e6da849cd24cf6d30db

Why take photographs of the dead or photos that are maddening?

The tradition of taking photographs of the dead as if they were alive appeared in the United States at the dawn of photography. Dead children were especially often photographed this way.

Before being photographed, the deceased minors were dressed in the most beautiful dresses, decorated with flowers, seated in a chair or on a bed, placed in natural poses. Often their favorite toys were placed in their hands. The deceased looked as if he were alive. In many photographs, their living parents, brothers and sisters posed with deceased children.

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The late Victorian era, the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, left our generations with one of the most eerie legacies - numerous post-mortem photographs of deceased people. This was the time of the first widespread use of photo-making technology, daguerreotype, invented in 1820-1830 by the French Joseph Nicéphore Niepce and Jacques Mande Daguerre, and, characteristically, the invention was announced after the death of the former. The times were not easy, medicine was not nearly as well developed as it is today, mortality - and especially the mortality rate among children and minors - was off the charts. Perhaps that is why then in some countries (for example, in Canada) the practice of photographing not just the dead, but even deceased family members with living relatives became widespread.

Thus, we have received photographs that can cause trembling: dead children together with living parents; a child posing on the lap of a dead mother; like...

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I also join all the comments... like many families, I also found a small case, well, how do I know where everything is, and here is such an interesting suitcase, I looked in, dear mother.... funeral, funeral, relatives. ..well, I’ve seen enough, it was so creepy..
now, many years later, having seen enough of all the mysticism, these photos did not give me peace of mind, I always remembered them, I couldn’t stand it, I talked to my mother and convinced her to burn everything, maybe I did the wrong thing, but no one looks at these pictures will be, and grandpa I have a photo in my life, I always look back at my photos, and my grandfather, godfather, grandmother are next to me during my lifetime, and I will always look at these photos, and not the ones with wreaths, in the coffin... I have my mom and dad obedient, they burned them all, I...

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At the end of the 19th century, photographing dead children became a tradition. Cards with dead dead Mothers cherished their babies as the most precious thing they had.

When they photographed small children who died in their families from illnesses, they were often made to look as if they were alive. They were filmed with their favorite toys and even sat on chairs. The kids were dressed in the most elegant dresses and decorated with flowers.

Often parents even tried to smile while holding their dead babies in their arms, as if they had just casually walked into a photo salon with them during their first walk.

Children sometimes had pupils drawn on their photographs to imitate open eyes. There were even photos in which the dead were captured with pets - birds, cats, dogs. What is especially striking is that the dead and living sons and daughters were filmed together. For example, there is a shot where twin girls are sitting on the sofa - one dead,...

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Types of post-mortem photography.

There are several subtypes of post-mortem photography. In some cases, the deceased were photographed “as if they were alive.” They tried to sit me on a chair, give me a book, and in some cases even kept my eyes open. In the Burns collection there is a photograph of the girl taken nine days after her death. On it, she sits with an open book in her hands and looks into the lens. If it weren't for the inscription on the photograph, it would not be easy to understand that she died. Sometimes the deceased were seated on a chair, with the help of pillows they were placed, reclining, on the bed, and sometimes they were seated, draping the coffin with cloth.

Other photographs show the deceased lying in bed. Sometimes these photographs were taken immediately after death, sometimes the deceased, already dressed for burial, was laid on the bed for farewell. There are photographs of the body resting on a bed next to the coffin.
Another, most common type of photograph can be called “coffin”. The deceased are depicted in or near their coffins. IN...

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It is believed that during the process of shooting with a camera, not only external image, but also the human soul. After all, it is one of the most powerful sources of energy. If you direct this force in the wrong direction, then various troubles will begin to happen to the person, and in some cases, death is possible. There is also a ban on photographing sleeping people, since at this very moment a person is especially vulnerable and susceptible to influence external factors. And very similar to lifeless. Why can't you photograph the dead?

The tradition of photographing the dead first appeared in Europe, and then it took root in Russia. This was especially true for dead children, whom parents really wanted to capture in order to somehow brighten up their grief. That is why the photographs of those times look very elegant, and people look little like the dead. For this purpose they were dressed in beautiful clothes or even photographed with living family members.

So why can't...

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In the life of every person there are a number of most important events, around which there is an aura of mystery. These are pregnancy and childbirth for women, engagements and weddings, illness and death for all people. And it is precisely because of the importance and relative uniqueness of each such event that they become overgrown with superstitions and signs.

History of photographing the dead

The tradition of photographing the dead arose in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, and gradually penetrated into Russia. This was due to the fact that the production of photographs was expensive and complex, and also required a lot of time for the preparatory stage.

Not everyone, but only wealthy people, could afford a photo as a souvenir. Therefore, in the event of the death of one of the family members, relatives called a photographer to the house, dressed the deceased in the best clothes, gave him a pose natural for a living person, sat down next to him - and received a memorable photo.

In the case of families from poorer backgrounds...

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