In my opinion post mortem photography is just plain weird.
As Wells suggests, this idea of photographing dead family members is either
accepted or rejected by societies based on how comfortable with death they are.
While this is only part of a very complex discussion I believe this is somewhat
true. I believe as a society we are not very comfortable with the idea of death
and even if we are, it is an extremely private matter. A public display of a
dead child or loved one on the mantel is not necessarily something that one
expects when walking into someone’s home.
Wells continues to discuss post-mortem photography by saying
that photographs of the deceased were often staged as if the person was just
asleep, and therefore it was more widely accepted. I disagree with the idea
that posing a dead child as asleep is somehow a better way of preserving their
memory than a photograph of them happy and alive. I realize that this probably
changed as time went on though. Back when these post-mortem photographs were
very popular consumer cameras were few and far between. Photography was also
still extremely expensive so maybe there were not many photographs of the
person when they were alive if any at all.
2 comments:
It's interesting to me to learn how societies deal with death, and how those customs have changed over time. As you said, post-mortem photography was at once point accepted and normal. Today, the only ones taking pictures of corpses are medical examiners to use in police reports or by nosy reporters.
And I agree, our current society is not comfortable with death in the least. We need to go to extremes such as washing,dressing, and putting makeup onto a corpse in order to convince ourselves that they're still alive, just in an eternal sleep.
I agree with Will in saying that post-mortem photography is simply quite odd and a tad disturbing. I understand that this may have been the only time a child could be memorialized, but at the same time, I also feel that this photograph would take away from the good memories a family had with their child while it was living. It is difficult for our brains to work past a photograph because it is forever frozen in time. It is possible that the sick, lifeless face seen in the photograph would be the only face the family would begin to remember in time.
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