The eerie post-mortem tradition: Why Victorians took photos of the deceased.

During the Victorian era, portraits were only available to the wealthiest, as painting was considered an expensive luxury. As a result, common people often could not capture images of themselves or their relatives, and after death, their likenesses remained in the memories of loved ones.

The year 1839 is traditionally regarded as the beginning of post-mortem photography, when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre developed the first technology for capturing images—daguerreotype. This method was significantly cheaper than painting, which led to its rapid rise in popularity.

The main drawback of the daguerreotype was the camera's exposure time. A single copy of a photograph could only be obtained after 15-30 minutes of the subject sitting still in front of the camera. This was quite a tedious process. Consequently, many images turned out poorly: they were either blurred, the person's eyes were closed, or there were issues with lighting. No one wanted to pay for low-quality photographs.

In response, practitioners of this art form devised a clever trick—photographing a motionless person, that is, a deceased individual. This idea gained popularity and persisted for about a century.

The primary clients of photographers were parents who had lost a child. The 19th century saw high infant mortality rates, and not all children survived to adulthood. To immortalize the memory of their beloved children, parents posed for photographs with their lifeless bodies.

To make the deceased appear lifelike, special makeup was applied, and tripods were used to support the bodies. They were seated in chairs, posed naturally, and their legs were secured in an upright position. It was quite rare for the deceased to be photographed lying in bed or on a sofa. Most often, they were dressed in festive attire, given makeup, and sometimes even had eyes painted on their closed eyelids.

Soon, people began to take photographs with other deceased family members: brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents. The mournful event transformed into a genuine celebration eagerly anticipated by the entire family. At that time, it was believed that as long as a person was nearby—even in death—they belonged to the world of the living.

The concept was indeed successful, as one could hardly tell from such photographs where the living ended and the dead began.

As technology advanced, new possibilities for photography began to emerge. By the mid-19th century, exposure times started to decrease, and by the beginning of the next century, more convenient photographic processes were developed, ultimately leading to the decline of the trend for post-mortem photography.