1167
The postmortem image seems have been made more for
the private consumption of the family or even the indi-
vidual within the family who requested it. By the turn
of the century, the popularity of amateur photography
brought about by the Kodak brownie camera had already
made the need for a professional postmortem photog-
rapher even less necessary, particularly for those who
wanted their desire to record the deceased to be more
private. The photographic postcard format was popular
among amateur postmortem photographers, but unlike
other subjects, it was rarely sent through the mail as a
postcard. When postcard images were sent, they were
enclosed in a letter. Since the format was inexpensive
and supplies were widely available it was often simply
the format of choice for private consumption. By the
end of the century, postmortem images in general were
more frequently kept and put away rather than openly
displayed or sent to relatives.
The practice of postmortem photography continued
throughout the 20th century and is still alive in the 21st
century. However, by the 1930s and 40s new funerary
rites and customs had supplanted the high Victorian
funerary practices. Death was no longer a socially
acceptable topic of conversation; grief and mourning
became very private, with view visible manifestations.
In a manner of speaking, postmortem photography, once
openly discussed and displayed, went underground.
Note: This article of necessity focuses on the 19th
century Anglo-American practices of postmortem
photography. A survey of practices around the world,
focusing on places like Mexico, which have a rich and
distinct tradition of postmortem photography, requires
a separate series of articles.
Beth Ann Guynn
See also: Daguerreotype; and Wet Collodion Positive
Processes.
Further Reading
Burns, Stanley B., Sleeping Beauty: Memorial photography in
America, Altadena, Ca.: Twelvetrees Press, 1990.
Norfl eet, Barbara P., Looking at Death, Boston: David R. Godine,
Publisher, 1993.
Meinwald, Dan, “Memento Mori: Death and Photography in
Nineteenth Century America.” California Museum of Pho-
tography Bulletin, vol. 9, no. 4, (1990).
Morley, John, Death, Heaven and the Victorians, Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971.
Pike, Martha, and Janice Gray Armstrong, eds., A Time to Mourn:
Expressions of Grief in Nineteenth Century America, Stony
Brook: Museums of Stony Brook, 1980.
Ruby, Jay, Secure the shadow: Death and Photography in
America, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995.
Sobieszek, Robert A., The Spirit of Fact, the Daguerreotypes of
Southworth and Hawes, 1843–1862. Boston: Godine, 1976.
Van der Zee, James, Harlem Book of the Dead. New York: Morgan
and Morgan, 1978.
El arte ritual de la muerte niña, Artes de México; n.s. no.15,
México, D.F. : Artes de México, 1992. (The Ritual Art of
Child Death)POTTEAU, JACQUES-PHILIPPE
(1807–1876)
J.-P. Potteau fi rst practiced photography in 1861 when
he was an assistant in the laboratory of malacology, at
the Natural History Museum in Paris. His photographic
work, at its beginning, is diffi cult to distinguish from
that of Louis Rousseau, whose activity he takes over
as the offi cial photographer, in a fi eld as vast as the
museum’s collections. Today he is better remembered
as a portraitist, an important work undertaken as early as
1862 in his studio next to the botanical garden—Jardin
des Plantes. Many foreigners visiting Paris where taken
there and Potteau was able to portrait tens of people,
members of Oriental embassies—China, Cochinchina,
Japan, or Siam. He also started taking anthropological
portraits of Algerians, Annameses, Bohemians, Indians,
Italians, Kabyles and French. His photos are highly
restrained: the models are posed either full face or side
view, frontal, from a fi xed distance, somewhat gravely.
This approach to portraiture will be more frequently
used, in the nineteenth century and later, for ethnog-
raphy or even anthropometry. J.-P. Potteau’s works,
rich of more than a thousand photos, are yet to be fully
explored. Most of his works is preserved at the Quai
Branly museum in Paris.
Jérôme GhesquièrePOU Y CAMPS, JUAN MARIA
(1801–1852)
Spanish photographer
One of the first daguerreian manuals to appear in
Spain—Exposicion Historica y Descripcion de los Pro-
cedimientos del Daguerreotipo y del Diorama was trans-
lated from the inventor’s original text by Joaquin Hysern
y Molleras. It contained extensive notes on experiments
carried out by Dr. Juan Maria Pou y Camps—one of
the fi rst to make daguerreotypes in Madrid—who also
published the volume.
He had attended public demonstrations of the pro-
cess in Paris, and recognised that the process could be
improved signifi cantly. By the end of October 1839
Pou and colleagues in Madrid had produced their fi rst
images, and before the end of 1839, their improvements
and observations on the process had been incorporated
into the manual.
One suggestion was the adaptation of the camera
to act as a photometer. Thus he was probably the fi rst