Yet another post mortem photo that has no providence, appearing multiple times on the internet without any background information. For all that it’s old and faded, I do think it’s terribly pretty. The photographer has taken care to get the background details in, with the religious paintings looking very much as if they’ve been hung especially for this picture.
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Filed under children, memento mori, post mortem photography, Uncategorized, Victorian
click to embiggen
This rather touching post mortem photograph shows Victoria, Duchess de Nemours, alongside a picture of her as she would have appeared whilst still alive. Only 35 when she died, Victoria was a member of the Saxe-Coburg family and first cousin of Queen Victoria.
Boringly, the best source of background information I can find for the Duchess is the omnipresent Wikipedia – click here for further info
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Filed under memento mori, post mortem photography, Victorian
Three new post mortem photographs in the ‘Children’ gallery – they’re along the last row of the gallery page. As always, click to embiggen.
CLICK THROUGH TO CHILD POST MORTEM GALLERY
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Filed under americana, children, memento mori, photography, post mortem, Victorian
Three more adult post mortem photographs for you – as with previous photo posts they’re the last three pictures along the last row.
Vi x
CLICK THROUGH TO ADULT POST MORTEM PHOTO GALLERY
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Filed under Uncategorized
Erm...
I just love this. A Victorian child post mortem photograph, it is also a perfect example of what is commonly known as ‘hidden mother photography’. The phrase is used to describe any picture in which another person is (usually badly) hidden whilst they hold the child – it isn’t restricted to mothers. ‘Hidden mothers’ are seen in pictures of live children as well as dead ones – the idea was to keep the child calm and quiet whilst the photo was taken, as pictures could take several minutes to develop and the subject had to stay immobile for that time in order to avoid blurring the image.
Many more (unintentionally hilarious) examples of hidden mother photography can be found in this Flickr pool
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Filed under children, memento mori, post mortem photography, Victorian
There are so many post mortem on the Skull now that it’s easy for them to get lost in the ether, so I’m going to bring the good ones back out every now and again.
This pic is of three sisters – the lady in the centre is the deceased. You can see how awkward she appears, compared to her siblings. You can find the original entry here.
Is it bad that the first thing that comes to mind when I look at this photo is how much I love those frocks?!
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Filed under Uncategorized
I found this ‘post mortem’ photograph on a Russian-language website, and being embarrassingly uni-lingual I was unable to work out the description. To add to my woes I have now lost the site details. So if anyone’s got any background information for this, do let me know.
Okay, so it’s apparently a young woman laid out in a coffin, in a graveyard. But. BUT. If you are about to bury someone, you’re unlikely to have all that fabric trailing around, surely? And is it usual to have an open casket actually in the graveyard?
I’m inclined towards the idea that it’s a set up, but an old and prettily-executed one. What do you think?
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Filed under cemetery, dead or not, graveyards, memento mori, post mortem photography
The latest vintage photographs that I’ve found are all of deceased children being held by a living relative, which I always find particularly touching. These pictures were on a blog site which appears to have been used once and never posted on again. I have checked for original sources but found nothing definitive for any of them.
The new pictures are the last six in the gallery, across the last two rows. As always, click to embiggen!
CLICK THROUGH TO CHILD POST MORTEM GALLERY
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Filed under Uncategorized
Yet again, a supposedly post mortem photograph that I’m not entirely sure about. The girl is slumped awkwardly against her mother, who appears to be holding her up. But her eyes do seem to be ‘looking’ at the camera, and she doesn’t have the strange skin tone seen on many post mortem photos.
What do you think – dead or not?
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Filed under children, dead or not, memento mori, post mortem, post mortem photography, Victorian
Kurt Cobain in his home, April 8th 1994. His official date of death was given as April 5th.
Why are we so obsessed with dead celebrities? More specifically, why do so many people want to pore over photographs of famous corpses?
Death is the great leveller – it comes to all of us whether rich and famous or a poor nonentity. Maybe we view celebrity death through a veil of schadenfreude, satisfied that for all a person’s wealth or fame they still end up like the rest of us.
The photo at the top of the page is of Kurt Cobain, taken after his suicide in April 1994. I was 24 at the time and a massive Nirvana fan, so I really felt the loss personally. I find this picture so touching, with the sneaker’d foot slumped over like a teenage boy who’s fallen asleep drunk. It’s more tragic than any graphic picture would be – I’ve seen the head shot from the medical reports and it means nothing (apart from a faint sense of nausea) because it is so far removed from life.
But that photo of the boy lying on the floor of his home? Gets me every time.
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Filed under dead famous, famous, photography
