#Spacechem postmortem archive

This exhibition will survey memorial photography from the 19th through 21st centuries and show how the artistic efforts of the photographers contributed to the emotional qualities of the images.

The personal nature of postmortem imagery frequently makes it difficult for us to view memorial images from the past much less from our own time. The living were depicted with their deceased loved ones with whom they were often not portrayed previously. With over 300 linear feet of paper images and 6 cases containing ambrotypes, tintypes, daguerreotypes- it is the largest postmortem photography exhibit to date.įor as much as people of the 21st century avoid the subjects of death and postmortem photography, those of the 19th century embraced it.

#Spacechem postmortem archive

The Burns Archive will be displaying examples of postmortem photographs, antique coffin plates, death announcements, mourning pins and other funerary ephemera. Trace the evolution of postmortem photography through 19th-century daguerreotypes and prints from Sleeping Beauty book series as well as contemporary images by Todd Hochberg. But this collection of memorials are about the survivors' needs, not the dead, and are thus particularly eerie and wrenching. Medical ephemera always have an emotional valence, because they represent patients who suffered, struggled and eventually lost their physical battles. Through the end of May, UMBC's Albin O Kuhn gallery is hosting a large exhibition of postmortem daguerreotypes, death masks, coffin plates, etc.