The Thanatos Archive / Jack Mord. July 19, 2017. ... By the 1860s, death photos began explicit attempts to animate the corpse. Dead bodies sit in chairs, posed in the act of playing or reading.

Emil, Mary, and Anna Keller, 1894 murder-suicide. | Courtesy of the Thanatos Archive. Used with permission. Identifying information provided where known. “Secure the shadow, ere the substance ...