Memorial Photography
Perhaps it is difficult for us today to understand just what a miracle photography was to people in the mid-nineteenth century. Today we take photographs for the fun of it, deleting and photo shopping to our heart’s content in a way that would have astonished our ancestors.
Edward C. Mayo
L.54.03.03
Valentine Richmond History Center
Perhaps it is difficult for us today to understand just what a miracle photography was to people in the mid-nineteenth century. Today we take photographs for the fun of it, deleting and photo shopping to our heart’s content in a way that would have astonished our ancestors.
Our reasons for taking pictures have also changed. For our great-great grandparents, photography was expensive and cumbersome and one had to have a darn good reason to have it done. Our ancestors saw in the new art a way to document only the most important of occasions which included weddings, inaugurations, political occasions and…death.
It may be hard to imagine but people of this time period did not find it strange to have photographs taken of their dead family members. The new art of photography gave them hope that they would never forget the face of a loved one.
In the earliest years of memorial photography, the deceased was arranged in their coffin or on a bed in a sleeplike pose, often surrounded by flowers. Later on it became the fashion to arrange the corpse to look as though they were taking part in normal activities such as reading.
There are people today who make a hobby out of collecting memorial photography and the debate rages on in these circles about what is and is not a memorial photograph. Some say that photographs showing a person propped up with a stand just visible behind them are actually dead while others maintain that using a stand was common for living subjects to keep them from shifting poses during the often long process of having a photo taken.
Memorial photography had its heyday at the tail end of the nineteenth century but you may be surprised to know that you can still have it done. Special companies exist today that perform this very unusual service.
For more information about these photographs or any of the others in our collection, please email the Archives Department at archives@richmondhistorycenter.com
Autumn Reinhardt Simpson, MLIS
Research Assistant
Valentine Richmond History Center
Ellen Virginia Bigelow
P.77.28.19
Valentine Richmond History Center
