Victorian death photography was a thing. Before cameras were cheap, people used to get photos taken of their dead loved ones because it was literally the only p

Victorian death photography was a thing. Before cameras were cheap, people used to get photos taken of their dead loved ones because it was literally the only photo they would ever have of that person and they wanted to cherish the memory. Often these photos would be taken as a group family picture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_photography > Post-mortem photography was very common in the nineteenth century when "death occurred in the home and was quite an ordinary part of life."[3] As photography was a new medium, it is plausible that "many daguerreotype post-mortem portraits, especially those of infants and young children, were probably the only photographs ever made of the sitters. The long exposure time made deceased subjects easy to photograph.' > In the Victorian era it was not uncommon to photograph deceased young children or newborns in the arms of their mother. The inclusion of the mother, it has been argued, encourages one to see through the mother's eyes