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FILE 127 · VOL XX · The Dead Are Still Working
In Old Family Photos, One Person Is Already Dead. In This One, It's the Photographer.
The last file in the Archive. Hold still. It will only take a moment.
Based on: Victorian Post-Mortem Photography
Intake record
| Recovered from | Estate sale, Galena, Illinois, inside a velvet-lined photograph case |
|---|---|
| Contents | A daguerreotype in a hinged case, a photographer's appointment book from 1851, a modern photo scan with metadata, a note addressed to the Archive itself |
| Finder | The Archive (see below) |
| Status | Post-mortem photography is documented. This file is the only one in the Archive that was sent to us by its subject. |
Recovered file
Photography was invented in 1839. [1] For the first time in history, an ordinary family could have a picture of someone they loved that looked exactly like them. Not a painting. Them.
It was expensive. A portrait might cost a week's wages. Many families had only one taken in their whole lives. [1]
For many families, that one photograph was taken after someone died. [1]
In the 1800s, many children did not live to grow up. Diseases like diphtheria, cholera and scarlet fever killed thousands. When a child died, a grieving family might realize they had no picture of her. Not one. And soon there would be nothing left of her face at all. [1]
So they called the photographer.
He came to the house. The child was dressed in her best clothes, often laid on a bed or a sofa, or held in her mother's arms, as if asleep. Sometimes her eyes were painted open on the print afterward. Sometimes flowers were placed in her hands. [1]
The photograph was called a memorial portrait, or a memento mori, a Latin phrase meaning remember that you will die. Families kept them in velvet cases, hung them on walls, carried them in lockets. [1]
The practice was common for decades and faded by the early 1900s, as more people owned cameras and fewer children died young. [1]
There is a popular myth about these photographs. It says that photographers used metal stands to prop up the dead so they would look alive, standing, with open eyes. Pictures online claim to show standing corpses. [2]
Historians who study the photographs say this is almost always wrong. Early cameras needed long exposures, so photographers used stands to hold the living still. The people in the standing photographs were alive. The dead were usually shown lying down, peaceful, looking asleep. [2]
The living were the ones who had to be held up.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 127 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.