Yesterday in the New York Times there was an article about a growing fad in New Orleans and elsewhere for propping dead people in life-like poses. The idea is that loved ones who attend the wake may have one last look at their dearly departed sitting at their kitchen table, straddling their Harley, or standing with their hands on their walking cane, a hat tilted at a jaunty angle. One woman wanted to be seen for the last time standing over her cooking pot.
You can see the article here. It’s pretty creepy, isn’t it? But there’s actually a tradition of propping up dead people and posing them as though they were still alive.
In this blog I wrote about the 19th century phenomenon of taking pictures of dead loved ones. (Also here.) As photography became more popular, many people commissioned these so-called memento moris, or post-mortem pictures. The saddest ones are of dead children, and I won’t post those here, but here are some other examples.
