In pre-industrial societies, those who could afford to be photographed were those who had the money to hire an artist to paint a picture for them. Everything would change when Louis Daguerre Y William Henry Fox Talbot they invented the daguerreotype and the calotype in 1839 and 1840 respectively. It is from then on that the portrait became available to practically the entire nineteenth-century industrial society due to the cheapening of the process. Over the years, photography spread rapidly throughout the world and diversified into very diverse themes. Among these we find portraits of personalities, landscapes, monuments, scientists, public and private works, celebrations, works of art, etc. And among all these types of portraits, it is worth highlighting the post mortem photographs.
The techniques also diversified. in 1850 Blanquart Evrard begins to use silver nitrate sensitized albumin paper to improve image sharpness. A year later Gustave LeGray will use a new photographic process known as “wet collodion.” This allowed the exposure time to be reduced to a few seconds, which meant a reduction in costs.
In this article we will see what is the post mortem photographywhat were its predecessors, what typologies were there and how did this practice spread through the nineteenth-century societies of the time.
Post mortem photography background
The practice of photographing the deceased did not emerge as such with the invention of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, since throughout the history of humanity it had already been done, although less frequently.
The remotest origins of the postmortem portraits can be found in the Egypt of the pharaohs, although without a doubt the most famous are those known as «Fayoum portraits». The Fayum portraits are naturalistic portraits painted on cloth or wooden boards that were placed over the mummies’ faces so that the deceased could be identified in the afterlife. That is why the portrait had to be as faithful as possible to the appearance of its owner. These paintings date from the 1st-4th century, when Egypt was already a Roman province, and continued to be practiced in the Byzantine and post-classical times. They were located in the necropolis of El Fayum and around 900 are currently known.
In Europe, the use of death mask between nobility and royalty, although its use was already practiced in the Ancient Rome. A mortuary mask is the copy of the face of a deceased person by casting it in plaster and reproducing it in positive using various materials such as beeswax or resins. This practice intensified especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dante Alighieri, Napoleon Bonaparte or Nikola Tesla are just some of the illustrious characters portrayed using this technique.
Post-mortem pictorial portraits were also made in Renaissance and Baroque Europe, although their high production cost meant that only the elite could have access to them.
Origins of postmortem photography
The postmortem photographyas its name indicates, is the image of a subject captured after his death. This is a practice that was born at the same time as the daguerreotype in 1839. In fact, on October 14, 1839, Dr. Alfred Donne announces to the Paris Academy of Sciences that he obtained «a very beautiful result taking the image of a dead person » (Vázquez, 2014: 470).
According to some historians, the origins of postmortem photography are found in the victorian england, where it quickly became popular due to the high infant mortality rate. It is then that this practice became the only affordable way for relatives to preserve a memory of their deceased children (Carrillo, 2014: 9). In addition, it should be noted that the salary conditions of the time did not leave room for spending outside of the family’s livelihood, so many families could only afford to photograph their loved ones once in their lives, and they did so when they were dead.
This practice will multiply as photographic techniques become simpler and cheaper. Even so, there will be notable differences among the post-mortem photographs taken in the rural area of those made in the urban area. While the former were more austere and interested only in portraying the face of the deceased, in the latter an ornate wake was displayed in order to demonstrate the purchasing power of the family (Carrillo, 2014: 14).
This is how the postmortem portrait will become a international phenomenon that will be adapted to the different societies through the particularities of each territory (Vázquez, 2014: 468). What stands out about him is his comforting ability and being an object of documentary nature that will serve as a souvenir in a photo album. These portraits, later, can be used both to share among relatives who had not been able to attend the funeral (Vázquez, 2014: 471) and to contemplate each other in privacy, far from the rigid labels of mourning (Carrillo, 2014: 7).
The presence of this practice in rural and urban societies was confirmed by Jay Ruby, who, based on his studies on the sociocultural role of photography in a rural county in Pennsylvania, was able to demonstrate how this practice of post-mortem photography was not confined to some certain rural societies but rather that it was something common at different social levels, thus refuting Michael Lesy’s thesis that affirmed that photographs of the deceased were strange Victorian customs that hardly had a generalized presence in the society of the time (Vázquez, 2014: 468-469) .
Typologies of postmortem photography
Fernando Vázquez focuses on the iconography shown in the post-mortem photographs when determining the typologies of these. The iconography will vary depending on the demands of the family when ordering the portraits and will be different according to the societies. For example, while in North America children are portrayed with toys or clothes that characterize them, in Central America they will be represented being shrouded as Saint Joseph and girls as the Immaculate (Vázquez, 2014: 469).
On the other hand, Jay Ruby, in his work «Secure the Shadow: Death Photography in America» (1995), analyzes the different types of post-mortem photography that have been carried out throughout history based on the way of portraying. Among these typologies we basically find three: simulating life, simulating being asleep and not simulating anything. These three typologies did not replace each other, but the three coexisted over the years. Each family could choose one or the other based on their needs or purchasing power (Osorio, 2016: 328).
Postmortem photographs simulating life
In these types of photographs, the deceased was portrayed with the Open eyes, usually sitting somewhere or standing. Generally the family used to appear next to him as if it were an ordinary portrait. In these cases it is not difficult to identify who the deceased person is since the hands may appear purple or the features of the face may be very tense. Sometimes the deceased was photographed with the closed eyes and later the photographer retouched the image by painting open eyes on top of the eyelids.
To keep the body upright and not fall down when photographed, they used special mechanisms to keep the deceased subject by the feet, the back and the head (Carrillo, 2014: 10).
Post mortem photographs pretending to be asleep
This type of portraits used to be done on children. they were photographed in bed as if they were sleepingO well in the arms of their parents if it was about babies. Ruby calls this as the pose of the “last dream» and relates it to the desire to associate death with sleep (Ruby, 1995: 63).
Sometimes it was the photographers who traveled to the family home to take pictures of the deceased. This is the case of Fernando Navarro, a Murcian photographer who took photographs in the patios of family homes. To take the portrait, he only needed sunlight, a white sheet as a background and a place to support the deceased (in the case of children it could well be a chair or a cradle) (Lara, 2005: 139).
Postmortem photographs without simulating anything
These are the normal and current photographs that used to be taken in a general way. The deceased was photographed lying in bed, usually surrounded by flowers. It could also be photographed directly in the coffin. Sometimes, if the family wanted him, he could be photographed during the burial, usually surrounded by loved ones. These cases used to occur when the family did not have enough money to pay for a photographic studio (Carrillo, 2014: 12).
The practice to take post-mortem photographs began to decline in the mid-20th centurymoment in which the photographic machines begin to be accessible to the whole society thus allowing to be photographed in life.
Conclusions
We can say that post-mortem photography was (and is) a photographic genre that emerged at the same time as the daguerreotype in 1839 as a response to social needs to preserve the memory of the deceased loved one.
This need will be supported for the first time in history by all of society, from the working class to royalty. Even so, depending on the socioeconomic level of the family, the portraits may be of one style or another.
Bibliography
Carrillo Soto, M. (2014). Post Mortem: the grieving process through photography. (Thesis). Mexican Association of Thanatology, Mexico.
Lara Lopez, E. (2005). «The social representation of death through photography (Murcia and Jaén, 1870-1902): a history of the bourgeois image». Journal of Dialectology and Popular Traditions, 60 (2), p. 129-147.
Osorio Cossío, H. (2016). “A veil for death. Post-mortem photographs of children in Medellín, 1898-1932». Transhumant. American Journal of Social History, 8, pp. 324-337.
Ruby, J. (1995). Secure the Shadow: Death Photography in America. The MIT Press, Boston
Vazquez Casillas, F. (2014). «Photography as a sociocultural document at the end of the 19th century: Nadar and the post-mortem portrait». Journal of Dialectology and Popular Traditions, 69 (2), p. 467-486.