PHOTOGRAPHY, DEATH AND REALITY

Photography, Death and Reality

Photography, Death and Reality

Introduction

Back in the 19th century taking pictures of dead relatives, friends, or people in general was very common but very few people could afford it because Photography at that time was luxury. Childhood mortality was extremely high and a photograph of a dead child might have been the only memory the parents ever had.

Death and Reality photography at that time are usually shots of the full body and I say 90% of them rarely include the coffin. The creepy ones for me are the ones where they arrange the person to appear lifelike, they would position them with their family members and you can't even tell which one is the diseased they would go as far as drawing a smile on the person's face or painting their cheeks pink so you can have the illusion that the person was alive because in reality that was what the relatives wanted.

Background of photography (Death and Reality)

The practice was to dress the body of a dead man with his clothes to click a final group portrait, with peers, family, friends, or portray them individually. The photograph was not considered morbid mortuary because of the social ideology. During this period, had a nostalgic vision of the medieval themes of death and was conceived with a much more sentimental air, reaching some see it as a privilege. 

In the 19th century, the composition of portraits of the dead, especially religious and children became widespread in Europe since the sixteenth century. The portraits of dead religious responded to the idea that it was a vanity portray in life, so once they die, their image was obtained. In these portraits emphasized the beauty of the deceased and was preserved for posterity.

The contemplation of death and their different views over time

Since ancient times man was concerned about making funeral rituals, such as logos of the transitory life of man. The examples are not as old but we have representatives culture that mummified Egyptian Pharaohs and devoid of life while maintaining their appearance for eternity.

The Maya in turn immortalized the deceased's face mask carving jade.

In Europe there appeared a singular ritual, it was the use of the death mask, originally for nobles and kings in ancient Rome (in Egypt already had that tradition by covering their faces with masks of the Pharaohs) the practice was intended to capture the faces of the illustrious dead who in life were influential men as artists, scientists and thinkers. In Europe , engraving headstones with the figure of the deceased, in order to maintain the physical and tactile memory of faces

This was the era Renaissance and Baroque mortuary where representations were very interesting fruits of a different look, through the portrait post mortem was made ??clear abandonment of the representation of man as an ideal, a concept inherited from Ancient Greece to show now the individual so crude without omitting defects. This new vision goes by the name of Rembrandt, whose portraits reflected the characteristics given above ...