Photographers Capitalize on a Trend
Shrewd photographers saw demand for mediums and spiritualism and figured out how to use the tools of their trade to capture that market. They had already convinced the public about the importance of taking a photograph of their deceased loved ones. Victorian postmortem photography gave people a chance to get one last photograph of their loved ones – sometimes it was the only photograph of their loved ones they would ever own. But postmortem photography only left people with an image of the physical body of their dead loved ones. Clever photographers who knew how to manipulate images through special effects or the developing process had a new way to break the wall between the alive and dead and not only give them a picture of their loved one’s body, but of their eternal soul.