DAY 98

PHOTOGRAPHIC CURIOSITIES

The Victorian Dead

A FINAL KEEPSAKE

A boy is posed holding a stringed instrument in his lap, seated on the edge of a large, upholstered chair.

An infant sits upright beneath an arch of white flowers. Her eyes stare ambiguously into the camera.

A young girl sits in a small rocking chair wearing her finest dress; her doll and other playthings appear on the floor nearby.

All of these children were dead when they were photographed.

Girl with Scissors. Cabinet card, ca. 1890. Image courtesy of The Thanatos Archive.

During the Victorian era, it was common for families to take elaborate photographs of their loved ones who had passed on. Many of these photos were taken to preserve the last memory of deceased children; often the mother would pose alongside the child’s body. In a dark predecessor to the modern Christmas card, copies of these images were sometimes mailed out to loved ones.

Curiously enough, many of the postmortem scenes were staged to appear as lifelike as possible: The corpse was often posed with its eyes propped open or with pupils painted on its eyelids. In almost contradictory fashion, the photographs announce tragedy even as they seem to simultaneously deny the finality of death. —DJS