Allen County, Indiana Historical Photos
To submit and identify photographs of local people, events, and locations go to our
Who Am I? Photo Identification Project on Facebook
The Allen County Public Library has a Community Album of historic area photographs
and the History Center Digital Collections is at IPFW
Victorian Death Photos - not as macabre as they sound
Merriam-Webster Dictionary online definition of MACABRE
1: having death as a subject : comprising or including a personalized representation of death
Sometimes old photos were taken of deceased people, especially children so families could memorialize them. Something similar today is The American Child Photographers Charity Guild "across the nation networked together to provide families of desperately ill children Free complimentary professional portrait sessions."
Memento Mori: Victorian Death Photos is a web site with photos of deceased people - many in their coffin or held up by family members in realistic poses. There is also a book about this subject "Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America" by Jay Ruby hardback in 1995, softcover in 1999, available on Amazon.com.