Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Popular authors like Charles Dickens documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.
- Professor of English, Macalester College
In the mid-19th century, photographs with ghostlike figures became collectible amusements thanks to the invention of the stereoscope – a device that created three-dimensional optical illusions.
You can uncover the depths and hidden details of your own family’s unspoken narratives by thinking like an archival researcher writing an ‘investigative memoir.’
Mothers are smudged out and poorly cloaked beneath drapes in these 19th century portraits. But these photos are not so much relics of shoddy photography than an ode to childhood.
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