Sunday 17 February 2013

Victorian Memento Mori




The two images above are from the Victorian era when they use to take images of their loved ones when they past away. 


In Victorian times, families took care of their dead before going into the funeral homes. We no longer take pictures of our dead to remind ourselves they are gone but it was an important part of the mourning process for Victorians. Its not as common to lose a baby, a young child, or a young adult with advances in medical care that began in the nineteenth century. The grieving process was done at home, and people were not so far removed from it. A dead body was nothing to be associated with morbidity, it was a fact of life, death, that people were unafraid to deal with.


Small children were photographed with a dead family member. Parents were photographed holding their dead babies, and children. Children were gathered around their grandparents, mothers, fathers, aunts, and uncles to photograph their loved ones with them for the last time. Often trinkets such as lockets were fashioned with a last memory of their loved one's picture inside to remind them this person is dead and gone, in a beautiful permanent sleep away from pain or sickness, forever in a state of blissful sleep.

Photographs often portrayed their dead as just that, sleeping, or with their eyes open, fixed in a peaceful pose, as if in pensive thought or a trans, a state not here, but with us, quietly watching and waiting for the ferryman to take them down the River of Styx to the land of the dead.

This is not the exact imagery that I am thinking of using within my own book because it is somewhat scary and would be difficult to produce. But it is a starting reference for the idea that I have thought of, making something look peaceful and a pleasure and a memory to recreate and produce.

No comments:

Post a Comment