Postmortem Relationships: Death and the Child in Antebellum American Visual Culture

Abstract

Since Roland Barthes published Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography in 1982, the prevailing theory about photography has revolved around its primary role as a manifestation of transience, death, and mortality. Whether one promotes the philosophy that the photographic image steals away the soul and promotes death, or that it simply captures images of those that have died or will die, the photograph has been commonly interpreted as a visual reminder of the finality of human life. At no time does such an interpretation appear to be more tangibly true than during the mid-nineteenth century when the photograph was commonly used to preserve the actual visage of death in post- mortem portraiture. Here, death is not suggested or implied, but is vividly present. However, the theoretical emphasis that Barthes placed on death has limited our understanding of such images by eliding other meanings historically associated with them. As an addendum to Barthes, I propose that post-mortem images - particularly those of children - represent a more complex relationship between life and death as it pertained to nineteenth-century American culture. Moreover, I believe that it is important to consider post-mortem photography in tandem with painted mourning portraiture, and to contemplate both within a larger visual and cultural context in order to gain a more holistic understanding of these images in antebellum America. My dissertation will re-situate post-mortem representations of children within the material and religious culture of antebellum America, amid evolving historical beliefs about the life of children, the concept of childhood, and ideas about child-rearing, not just postmodern theoretical notions of death. My particular focus on children responds to the poignancy of childhood death in antebellum America and the way in which these images particularly embody the belief in continued existence through the afterlife. By placing such images within the wider context of nineteenth-century culture, I will demonstrate that life existed in death for antebellum Americans through the physical or material presence of the photograph along with Christian spiritual associations regarding the soul and the afterlife. In other words, belief in an ongoing relationship between material and immaterial "bodies" was exteriorized in the painted or photographic representation of the physical corpse, enabling antebellum Americans to interpret the image as both the icon and physical residue of the soul. I will demonstrate that the materiality of the post- mortem image allowed antebellum Americans to preserve that sense of life within death. While the material presence of the image acted as a reflection of "being," spiritual beliefs in a heavenly afterlife permitted nineteenth-century viewers to meditate on the perpetuation, rather than the impermanence, of existence. While this complex historical dimension of post-mortem imagery - a dimension largely ignored by Barthes - provides the central focus of my dissertation, I will also analyze how these images were produced, commissioned, displayed, viewed, touched, cherished, and otherwise utilized in antebellum American culture.