Day By Day

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

History Carnival #15


Sorry to be a bit late on this one [I've been busy]. The latest History Carnival is up here at Clioweb. Check it out. Links to lots of good stuff there.

Here's a sample: a link to Thomas Weynants' History of Visual Media, the source for the picture displayed here. It's a post-mortem picture of a dead infant. This was a popular genre in early photography and was not considered morbid at the time -- simply a way to memorialize the dearly departed. See, this site provides a fascinating window into a culture not so long ago, but very different from our own. Today, in our sanitized culture we avoid images of death [which, parenthetically, explains much of the popularity of horror films -- they're transgressive], but earlier generations confronted it directly. Warning, not all the images are suitable for work viewing. Sex was as popular a subject for early photographers as was death.

I told you there was good stuff there.

"She Who Shall Not Be Named" still thinks the picture's gross.

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