Postmortem Fotografie
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In the 19th century, especially in rural America, families prepared their own dead for burial by laying the body on a board and washing and dressing it for the wake, traditionally held in the front parlor of the family home. Unlike residents of big cities, people who lived outside urban centers typically had no easy access to a photographer; thus, a postmortem photograph was often the only image kinfolk might have to remember a person by.
This was especially the case with children cut down too soon to have had a studio portrait taken. As evidence for the belief that "parents were often desperate to have one picture of their dying child," Ruby includes a copy of the carte de visite of a baby named Florence May Laser, noting, "An adult hand supports the child while on the back of the image someone has written, 'Taken while dying.'"