Oh man! Postmortem portrait photography.

[William Whitaker]

That's what I had figured, that child mortality rates 125 years ago were far above the modern norm.

[r_a_feldman]

Another book along this line is Wisconsin Death Trip.

[ederphoto]

Oh Louis ! You made me look at that ??? Now i'm going to have nightmares . That music gave me the creeps !!

[SteveR]

...I only skim-read the OP before opening what I thought was going to be a collection of Post MODERN portraits! Woops, where are my glasses...

I'll be honest, some of that was a bit hard to watch. Not because I'm squeamish or easily offended, but because since becoming a Dad I see things involving kids on a totally new level... Gawd it's been an emotional two years!

[Gudmundur Ingolfsson]

This type of photography was common all over the world up to the 1930ties. Most of the time those photographs were of people that had never been photographed when they died and after they had passed away, relatives realized they needed their picture taken to be remembered by. Photography is the memory ! The perversity of it is, that an epidemic was sometimes a great business opportunity for the local photographer.

[Marc B.]

For some of the children pictured in the video, more then a couple
of them have often been shown in documentaries about the Titanic.

Several children from the Titanic disaster were never identified...and were later
buried as unknown, with a designation of 'little girl' or 'little boy,' and a number.

So, a few of the children's pictures may have been taken,
and published...in an effort to identify their bodies.

Even today, little kids don't carry ID/travel documents...their parents do!
Back then, children didn't have/need photo passports like they do today.

[Steven Scanner]

First post since a while. I was just lurking around when I found this thread.
About a year ago we've lost our newborn son. We took a lot of pictures of the little guy, before and after he died. (he only lived for about 45 minutes). The undertaker asked us if we wanted to have a photoshoot done. Apparantly there are photographers that do this for a living. Although we liked the idea, we declined from that option. The pictures we had made ourself where enough.

About ID cards for kids: Our daughter has got her own ID card, from since she was a few months old. In the Netherlands, they used to write the name of your kids into your passport. Now they have to carry their own. It might be a good thing, but she's stuck with this card for four years. If you know how fast kids change, you'd understand that by the time she's 4, you can understand she won't look like a baby anymore.

[Brian Ellis]

Another book along this line is Wisconsin Death Trip.

My daughter gave me this book shortly after we moved to Wisconsin. It was one of the most fascinating, disturbing, sad, funny, gruesome, depressing, amusing, uplifting books I've ever read. We have no idea what we're talking about when we refer to the good old days.