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→Establishment of the Tradition
In the 1840s and much of the later 19th century, most people continued to die in their homes. Thus the tradition began where after a loved one had died the local photographer would be one of the first people summoned to the house. Initially, families did not do much to make the deceased appear better or nice in the photograph. However, even poorer families began to develop a new taste for clothing or scenery to help remember their loved one as post-mortem photography became more accepted and practiced. Different traditions did begin to emerge in Europe and the United States. In the US, families began to take photos and put them in boxes or mantels that would help remember the dead. In Europe, photographs were sometimes publically displayed to memorialize the deceased to others. Famous individuals such as Victor Hugo were photographed shortly after death with these photographs publically displayed (Figure 2).<ref>For more on how photography influenced new traditions, see: Linkman, A. (2011). <i>Photography and death</i>. London: Reaktion Books.</ref>
By the second half of the 19th century, photographs of the recently deceased became more elaborate. Now it was routine to even open the eyes of the dead and make them as living as possible in photographs. This included in recreating family scenes or even scenes that displayed a form of active participation of the deceased. Families would even do family portraits with the diseased in them made to look like they are still living. Symbols, such as drums or hourglasses, were used as symbols of the dead in photographs, where these symbols would indicate that march of time and the limited time we might have.<ref>For more on scenes of the dead in photography in the 19th century, see: Bryant, C. D., & Peck, D. L. (Eds.). (2009). <i>Encyclopedia of death and the human experience</i>. Los Angeles: SAGE, pg. 515.</ref>
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, post-mortem photograph became less popular in the United States. However, there was some resurgence up until the 1930s. During this time, so-called "mourning tableaux" became popular, where the deceased would now be placed in a coffin and photographs of family members around the coffin would be conducted as a memorial photograph. By World War II, it was mostly ethnic urban minorities and rural populations that still practiced the tradition of post-mortem photography. Photographers such as James Van Der Zee in Harlem became well known for their post-mortem portrait photographs. James Van Der Zee, one of the Harlem renaissance figures, wrote a book called <i>Harlem Book of the Dead</i> that showed some of his work and symbolized the popular practice of post-mortem photography in some parts of the United States.<ref>For more on photographers of the dead, see: Zarzycka, M. (2017). <i>Gendered tropes in war photography: mothers, mourners, soldiers</i>. New York: Routledge, pg. 78.</ref>
