Going Headless Was All the Victorian Rage (1875)
Deceiving grieving families was one of the more sinister sides of Victorian trick photography. But the Victorians loved a good photographic joke, too. Headless portraits were popular ways to shock and amuse friends and relatives. Swedish photographer Oscar Rejlander developed a method of using two (sometimes more) negatives to create one image, giving photographers freedom to play with images and mix them up in creative ways. One of the more macabre, but silly, ways they did this was to remove the head from one negative and place it in random spots on another; a husband’s head might end up in his wife’s lap, a whole platoon of headless soldiers, or in this case, a man might hold his own severed head. Given the gaping mouth and droopy eyes of this man, he was definitely in on the joke, presenting a “dead face” for the intent of a headless photo.