Some people in old photos never laugh when they take pictures because they are already dead.
Taking photos with dead people was a trend 100 years ago.
If the whole family got together and took a photo with the corpse, it would be considered an extremely weird and disrespectful behavior. However, photos of the living and the dead that seem a bit wicked today were quite popular in the Western middle class circles of the Victorian era in the 19th century.
is now taken alive, but in the 19th century people were taken after they died.
These photos are usually taken shortly after the death of their loved ones. People will place the bodies of their loved ones at a special angle, as if they are sleeping, and decorate them with flowers or toys, or use brackets to make them stand or sit up, or even Draw false eyes on the closed eyelids, and sometimes parents and siblings will take a family portrait together. The family
died of disease, and the body has begun to decay.
I remembered the conversation between Nicole Kidman and the maid in "Cry on the Island" flipping through an old photo album: "Look, how peaceful they sleep!" "They are not sleeping, madam, they are dead. "
This is really not used to scare people. I can only blame the social trend of
in the Victorian era. The shooting rate of photos in the Victorian era was higher than other types of photos. Especially in the United States, the shooting of posthumous photos has become a flourishing industry. At that time, after the industrial revolution, rapid urbanization developed many diseases. Plague, spotted rash, typhoid fever, and cholera were in parallel. The mortality rate of infants and children was extremely high. They did not leave many photos before they were alive. It has become a kind of sustenance and the only memorial that the family can have.
looks like an ordinary family portrait, but the sleeping girl in the middle does not wake up.
They strive to make the deceased look alive with their loved ones.
In fact, as early as the early 19th century, portrait painting was all the rage in Europe, and celebrities spent a lot of money to ask painters to keep their pictures of themselves or their families. When the silver plate photography appeared in 1839, this lofty activity became civilians, and from this was born the "remains art photography", the people can use a cheaper and faster way to commemorate the lost love.
In 1880, it was expensive for $1 to take a picture, so now the portraits seen in the photos are all rich people in those years.
brotherhood, in the eyes of outsiders, he just fell asleep.
Can you tell which one is the dead?
This is a more difficult old photo of
. It is rare to see a smile in the past. Now you know why!
This is an explanatory drawing showing how to make the deceased stand and take pictures. The stand is a bit like the camera tripod we are using now, and the height and angle can be adjusted at will.
These photos are sparse and common to American culture. They symbolize the process of mourning and remembrance. Living family members are often proud of having such photos. They will hang on the walls at home and send some copies to relatives and friends as souvenirs. They will also store photos in small pendant boxes for necklaces or carry them with them like makeup mirrors.
Some people are not afraid of evil, and they also collect these photos.
Dr. Stanley Burns, an American ophthalmologist and historian, took nearly 40 years to collect millions of photos and built the world's largest private photography museum. In his staggering collection, death photos account for a large proportion. In 1990, he edited a book titled "The Silent Soul: American Memorial Photography" to show the world how people in the Victorian era retained the appearance of their loved ones.
These photos are selected from the book of Dr. Burns, which seem to show the beauty of human nature from another dimension. It reflects from the side that people in that era did not despise death at all, because at that time an ordinary farmer earned a mere few dollars a month, and taking a photo with a deceased family member might cost the whole family's savings for nearly half a year.
