<BGSOUND SRC="largo.mid">
DAGUERREIAN DEATH

POSTMORTEMS AND PEOPLE FACING DEATH

(WARNING: The graphic nature of the following images may be discomforting)



Text and digital images copyright © (1997). All rights reserved. Copying or redistribution in any manner is prohibited. Any public or commercial use of these materials without prior written permission is a violation of copyright law.

(Clicking on most images that follow will show a screen size enlargement)




SIXTH PLATE DAGUERREOTYPE of a child resting in death. Artist unknown c1853


(Click on the image to view further details)




NINTH/QUARTER PLATE STEREOSCOPIC DAGUERREOTYPE
Postmortem of a child lying on a tinted quilt, holding a flower. Quarter plate Mascher stereo case. Unusual border construction utilizing segments of daguerreian plates. Artist unknown c1858.


(Click on the image to view further details)


These children, poised with poignancy and power, illustrate the devastating effect of illness and death on the daguerreian generation.

With death a constant threat to loved ones, especially innocent children, Americans of the 1840's could endure only through a sort of pathetic naivete or powerless acquiescence. This attitude developed from constant familiarity with illness and injury, and the impotence of their science and medicine to prevent its ravages. To paraphrase the historian Bernard De Voto, perhaps what makes these photographs uncomfortable for viewing:

"is not insincerity or sentimentality in the emotion that lamented them, but in a neutral-colored thing that has been added unto us and is called without value, sophistication. The emotions of the 1840's were simpler than our own, more limpid, more absolute, and more forthright."

No other memory of these children existed. Only the magic of the daguerreotype would aid bereaved parents to recall the brief years of deep joy and pain that only children bring to adults. Was it better to bury the sorrow through forgetfulness, and along with it the love? Or recall the bittersweet experience and the barely known child forever in the daguerreian mirror?

Whatever the motivation behind this generation's rapprochement with death, one should not dismiss the postmortem daguerreotype as grotesque.



CONTINUE to page 2


BACK TO PHOTOGRAPHY ESSAYS INDEX

BACK TO HOMEPAGE
Text and digital images copyright (1997). All rights reserved. Copying or redistribution in any manner is prohibited. Any public or commercial use of these materials without prior written permission is a violation of copyright law.