Victorian Post Mortem Photography

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Published Apr 13, 2018

Post-mortem photography (also known as memorial portraiture or a mourning portrait) is the practice of photographing the recently deceased. These photographs of deceased loved ones were a normal part of American and European culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Commissioned by grieving families, postmortem photographs not only helped in grieving, but often represented the only visual remembrance of the deceased and were among a family's most precious possessions. There can be considerable dispute as to whether individual early photographs actually show a dead person or not, often sharpened by commercial considerations.

The form continued the tradition of earlier painted mourning portraits. Today post-mortem photography is most common in the contexts of police and pathology work.