"sleeping"
anonymous
December 27 2008, 02:27:57 UTC
I don’t think this photo of the baby boy sleeping beside his sisters is quite what you think it is. Back then having your photo taken was an expensive purchase. It was unheard of to have a picture taken of your child… as long as it could be woken. I’m fairly certain that this is in fact a Victorian post-mortem photo. In other words, the boy is dead. Chances were the family had never had a photo taken of the child and all of the sudden it was too late. So they’d scramble for the nearest photographer. The photographers of the day were used to such requests. This photo was often the only image the family would have had of the departed, the only record of how they’d looked, and it was much less jarring for the relatives to look upon it later if the photographer took respectful care to create a peaceful and sometimes lifelike pose. Very often family would be included in the frame. Note the blond girl is wearing black mourning necklaces and both have black mourning ribbons in their hair. See the links below for similar images, some of
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