With the invention of the daguerreotype (the ancestor of the camera) in the mid-19th century, posthumous photographs of deceased people became especially popular. Relatives and friends of the deceased hired a photographer to capture dead person as a keepsake and left the photo as a souvenir. What is this: a bad whim or a mystical sign?
Post-mortem photographs and their purpose
Story
In those days, infant mortality was big problem, which is why the child can often be seen in surviving post-mortem photographs. People, as a rule, died not in hospitals, but at home. The funeral preparations were usually carried out by the family of the deceased, and not by ritual organizations. It was on such days of farewell that a photographer was hired.
The Victorian era had a different attitude towards death. People of that time acutely experienced separation and loss, but the body of the deceased itself did not cause fear and horror. Death was something common, even among children. Usually babies and older children did not have time to photograph during their lifetime. Common scarlet fever or flu sent to the next world great amount children. Therefore, posthumous photography was a completely adequate way to preserve the memory of a person.
Hiring a daguerreotype photographer required serious cash. Typically, this service was ordered by wealthy families. An imperfect daguerreotype required endurance and long immobility of the photographed person. But in the case of an immobilized and lifeless body, the process was greatly simplified and brought a substantial profit to the photographer. If living relatives expressed a desire to be photographed with the deceased, they would end up blurred in the photo, but the corpse looked perfectly clear.
Peculiarities
They liked to give the dead casual poses: as if they were alive, but resting or sleeping. Therefore, children were placed not only in coffins, but also on sofas, in strollers, and on chairs. They dressed up the child and made him beautiful hairstyle, surrounded by their favorite toys or even pets. To keep the body in position, it could be placed on the parents' laps. 
The development of posthumous photography has resulted in a kind of art. A special tripod was developed to fix the body in the desired position. The higher the skill of the photographer, the more alive the deceased looked in the photo. Photographers also used other tricks, for example, drawing eyes on closed eyelids, tinting the cheeks with blush, cropping photographs of someone lying upright, imitating a standing position.
Was there any point?
By the beginning of the 20th century, the popularity of posthumous photographs began to decline
Post-mortem photographs are the subject of study and the property of historical collections, because the highest quality and unusual photographs cost incredible amounts of money.
Unusual art in those days made us once again rethink life and death. Among the great men who have been photographed posthumously are Victor Hugo, and famous photographer of the dead - Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon). 
It is also curious that post-mortem photography gave rise to an alternative style in which the living pretended to be dead. Such a culture appeared due to the above-mentioned imperfection of the daguerreotype. The impossibility of instant shooting and the need for long posing forced the creation of images of the dead.
Karmic attachments, magic, other worlds - all this intertwines its roots with our reality. Ancestors looking at their followers from black and white photographs are inseparably linked with their family.
Each of us, with one hundred percent probability, keeps a century-old memory at home - a photo album of our grandparents. Did you know, readers, that keeping such things in a living space is very dangerous. The world of the dead and the world of the living are in different realities. But if you make an idol out of a deceased person. Put his photo in a prominent place, constantly remember him, or carry a photo of a non-existent person with you. Dead energy can begin to feed on your living energy, and at any moment you will find yourself close to the object of imitation.
Your safety - storing photos in photo albums, remembering them only in memorial days and no fanaticism.
1. So if the photos are just lying in an album, and you sometimes look at them when you indulge in nostalgia, there is nothing wrong with that. But if they often flash before your eyes, this will most likely lead to worsening general health and emotional instability.
2. Photos of the deceased should be kept separately from photos of living people. If you have “general” photos, store them in an album for the deceased. Some even recommend cropping such pictures in order to separate living energy from dead energy.
They also say that you should store them in a black album, in a black folder, or at least in an impenetrable black bag. And you can open a treasure trove of old photographs only on days of remembrance of the dead.
What do you think about this?
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After death loved one photography is something that reminds us of the deceased and gives warm memories. Therefore, it is not at all strange that we keep it. But esotericism claims that such photographs must be preserved according to special rules in order to avoid the influence of dead energy on living people.
The photo of the deceased is somehow connected with the world of the dead. When a person passes away, his connection with the world of the living remains. You need to know a few rules on how to properly store photographs of the deceased.
Do not hang photos of deceased people around the house or look at them often, as this takes energy away from a living person and deprives him of protection, which in turn will lead to a deterioration in mental, emotional and physical health.
Photos from funerals are especially dangerous. In some areas it is customary to take photographs from a cemetery, but this is a very bad tradition: such photographs will not allow a living person to forget about the tragedy and calm down. Therefore, if you have these, get rid of them as soon as possible.
Store them separately from live photos and in a black bag or folder. If there are both living and dead in the image, then it is better to crop the photo in order to separate the negative energy.
There is nothing wrong if the photos are in an album and you look at them occasionally. The main thing is not to get carried away: watching too often will lead to a deterioration in your emotional state.
There is also an opinion that you should only open a folder with photographs of the deceased on days of remembrance of the dead.
Psychologists have their own opinion on this matter. They say that we are afraid to hang photos of the dead only because they remind us of the transience of life, and that the day will come when we will leave this world.
They also advise to be sure to forgive the deceased. When we do this, the photo will not evoke grief and sadness, but pleasant memories associated with this person.
It's no secret that every photograph has energy, so storing them should be taken especially seriously.
Be sure to share this article with others to alert them to this important fact!
Photograph dead children. To a normal person It wouldn't even occur to me. Today this is wild, but 50 years ago it was normal. Mothers treasured cards with dead babies as their most precious possessions. And now, from these gloomy photographs, we can trace the evolution of man’s attitude towards death and towards his loved ones.
Children die slower than old people
A strange and, at first glance, creepy custom - photographing the dead - originated in Europe, and then came to Russia, in the middle of the 19th century, simultaneously with the advent of photography. Residents began filming their deceased relatives. In essence, this was a new manifestation of the tradition of painting posthumous portraits of loved ones and removing plaster masks from the faces of the deceased. However, portraits and masks were expensive, while photography became more and more accessible to all segments of the population.
- I saw one of the early photographs of a deceased child dating back to the 1840s,- said St. Petersburg photography historian Igor Lebedev.
In parallel, another direction of post-mortem photography developed - crime photography. Photographers went to crime scenes and photographed the dead for the police. At the same time, we are talking not only about specific photography, when they recorded how the body lay or where the bullet hit. The dead were also carefully placed on the bed and removed. This was the case, for example, with the Parsons family. The father, mother and three young children were killed and their bodies were thrown into the water. When they were discovered, they gathered everyone together and took one last family photo. However, it shows that everyone filmed is already dead.
When they photographed small children who died in their families from illnesses, they very often made them look like they were alive. They were filmed with their favorite toys and even sat on chairs. The kids were dressed in the most elegant dresses and decorated with flowers.
Often parents even tried to smile while holding hands of the dead babies, as if they had just casually walked into a photo salon with them during their first walk. Children sometimes had pupils drawn on their photographs to imitate open eyes.
There were even photos in which the dead were captured with pets - birds, cats, dogs. What is especially striking is that the dead and living sons and daughters were filmed together. For example, there is a shot where twin girls are sitting on the sofa - one dead, the other alive.
the girl on the left is dead
- There are quite a lot of photographs of children also because the infant mortality rate in those years was very high compared to today,- explains Lebedev, - In addition, a deceased child looks alive longer, while old people quickly change, the skin sags, and the decomposition of the flesh begins.
Books of the Dead
Already in the 20-30s of the 20th century, scientists began to study the phenomenon of post-mortem photographs. Then the expression “photography is a little death” appeared. With a click of the camera, the photographer seemed to kill the moment and at the same time make it eternally alive. This is how the dead remained forever alive on the cards, who were filmed in their usual surroundings - reading newspapers, in their favorite chair, with friends and family. The bravest ones even took pictures of the dead looking in the mirror. A series of such photographs formed a book of the dead. During the days of epidemics, entire family albums were collected in these gloomy books.
- They were collected mainly by women. They became the guardians of not only the hearth, but also the history of the family,- says Igor Lebedev.
It is, of course, creepy to view such collections as a stranger. But for the relatives these were sweet reminders.
There are several explanations for why these photographs were taken. First of all, it was fashion - people simply copied each other's behavior.
In addition, personal chronicles could be kept from photographs. The photographer was invited to every significant event in a person’s life - his birth, holidays, when buying a house or car, to a wedding, at the birth of his children. And the post-mortem photograph became logical conclusion in this row.
But the main thing is that in this way people tried to capture the last moment of a loved one. In the 19th–20th centuries. family meant much more than it does today. That’s why there were traditions of keeping hair and pieces of clothing of the dead.
And in the case of children, these could be their only photographs. Parents did not always have time to remove them during their lifetime. And so they had at least something left to remember.
- And, by the way, when relatives were asked about such photographs, they always remembered not the death of the deceased, not his torment, not their grief, but what he was like during his lifetime. We remembered only the good things- Lebedev said.
the girl in the center is dead
Today it is already difficult to understand such a way to immortalize loved ones - after all, these days, when almost everyone has a “soap box,” hundreds of his cards accumulate over a person’s life. So there is no need to do post-mortems.
The grave replaced the man
In Europeanized St. Petersburg this tradition was more developed than on the periphery. In villages, filming has always been an event comparable in importance to a funeral. Often these two events were combined. The whole village gathered for the funeral photography. At the same time, the coffin with the deceased was put in the foreground, and those gathered for the funeral lined up behind it.
- The result was a juxtaposition of the dead and the living, the dead man always looked at the sky, those gathered around - straight into the camera,- notes historian Igor Lebedev.
Almost all funeral homes employed photographers. These were masters who simply did their job.
- Professionals always have the question: “Who else besides me?” Follow ethics and refuse to photograph the dead, or press the button and leave the photo with your family loved one, - explains Lebedev.
Perhaps this is why we - not professionals - do not understand how to film the dead. Only Lenin in the mausoleum is an exception.
It is known that the tradition of filming dead children has been preserved in our country even in post-war years. Post-mortem photographs began to disappear only in the 60s. Then they started gluing photographs onto tombstones. And in those years one could see rare posthumous cards on crosses and steles.
- Almost every family in Russia had such photographs, but then they began to destroy them, now you can hardly find them,- Igor Lebedev is sure.
They tore up and threw away pictures with dead people because they no longer remembered these people, but family values- like, for example, the memory of the family - became a thing of the past. It has become more significant external manifestation proximity. That is why a unique phenomenon appeared in the Soviet Union - filming funerals. If in other countries they were limited to one or two mourning shots, then in our country they filmed the entire procession. And if at another time a person would never agree to show his tears, then here it was permissible - so that everyone could see how saddened he was by what happened.
- Photographs of the dead man were replaced by photographs of the grave. People could take pictures at the cross and at the same time hug it, smile, as if they were standing with the deceased,- historian Igor Lebedev spoke about the transformation of traditions.
Photographers still work in cemeteries during funerals. Although this custom is gradually dying out.
After the death of a loved one, a photograph is the thing that visually reminds us of the deceased and stores information about him. From an esoteric point of view, you need to store photographs of deceased people according to special rules in order to avoid negative impact dead energy and on living people.
What is the danger of photos of dead people?
The image of the deceased is connected with the world of the dead. If a person has passed away, then with the help of his photograph a connection with another world arises. Contact with such a photo can be dangerous, so you should not hang images of deceased people around the apartment or look at them too often.
Photos of dead people open a window into other world, which can harm a living person. Of course, there is nothing wrong if you keep photos of deceased relatives at home and periodically review them. However, frequent access to such images, and even more so their presence in plain sight (on the wall, in a frame on the nightstand) will not lead to anything good. First of all, such photos weaken the energy of a living person and deprive him of protection. The consequences could be even worse. Weakening energy can lead to deterioration of health and psycho-emotional instability.
Photos from funerals are also dangerous. For some reason, some people take pictures from the cemetery in order to once again remember the feelings they experienced. Such photos will constantly return a living person to his tragedy and will not give quiet life. It’s better not to take such pictures at all. If they are, then it makes sense to get rid of them.
How to properly store photographs of deceased people
- It is recommended to store photographs of the deceased separately from photographs of living people.
- It is advisable to store them in a black bag or black folder.
- If the image contains not only a deceased person, but also a living one, then it is better to crop the picture in order to separate the living energy from the dead.
Don't look too often at photos of deceased loved ones. It is best to look at such photos on the days of remembrance of the dead. We wish you good luck and don't forget to press the buttons and
18.03.2015 09:25
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