Reblogged from too-hardtohandle
In the nineteenth century, a morbid and curious custom has spread to various parts of the world: the photos were ”Post Mortem”.
”Post Mortem” comes from Latin, meaning after death.
The photos ”Post Mortem” apparently originated in England, when Queen Victoria asked to photograph the corpse of an acquaintance or a relative, so she can keep as a souvenir.
soon after, this idea spread around the world, keeping a morbid reminder of loved ones that have passed on.
Even today, as strange as it may seem, some places still have this custom.The girl who is standing in the photo is the one who is dead.
This is a classic example of photographic art.
Notice the hands
for people wondering how the corpse is standing up, there is a posing stand supporting the body it’s very hard to see but the stand is supporting the neck, arms and back.
the girl in this picture has her eyes open, but in some cases the photographer will paint pupils on the eye lids to make it seem like they are wide awake
Have some historical, non-fiction creepypasta.
I’ve studied about these pictures not too long ago.
One of the reasons they were so popular was that, while protography started to become popular at that time, it was still expensive, and sometimes the families couldn’t pay for take pictures of their children or other relatives often. So, they did it when said people died so, this way, they would have at least one memento of them.
Sometimes, the photos themselves were painted, to make the corpses look a little more “alive”. A lot of manipulation techniques were used.
