Ross Chambers
Member
Moving for me, but what do you think?
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NILMDTS (I think I got that one right...) is a great organization. I've known some photographers that have worked with them and it is a great way for a photographer to give back to the community and create tasteful photographs durring a time of stress and grief.
It's not a new thing, tintype death portraits of infants are common.
At first it seem to be detestable to think about it, but after looking through the pictures now I change my mind.
Jeff
Agreed... it may not be for everyone, but it seems when a family loses an infant, there can be almost nothing left to remind the grieving parents of their existence, of this infant that may have been part of a family for a few days... especially if the infant lived only a short time in the ICU. Seems to me a photograph can be an important keepsake, and reminder.
I've attended funerals in Romania and at least in the rural areas there's no such thing as undertakers - the family organises everything. But one thing that is always hired is a photographer to take a group photo of the mourners around the open coffin (which has sat open in the family home for some days). Every family photo album I've seen has these shots, old and new. Luckily, I've never been to a child's funeral, but I'm sure it's just the same.
I have actually heard the reason why so many death portraits were made well over 100 years ago: since it took over 15 minutes to expose film material back then, death portraits of people were almost the only way to get sharp pictures of people.Postmortem portraits, not just for infants, were once very common and popular.
While I'm not studied on the topic, I suspect one reason at the time was that photographs were much less common so for most folk they'd have been photographed only a couple times, if at all in their lives. A death portrait would be the last opportunity to have any visual memory of the deceased.
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