I doubt they took these photos because of anything financial. They could easily collect all the family for one group photo for "cheap" while everyone was still alive. I think they really liked doing this. And since photography was new tech there were no informal rules what you should use it for.
Again, in terms of practicality, you're right. A corpse is merely an object, and it doesn't really matter what you do with it. However, most people don't see it as an object. They see it as their loved one in a new, smelly, depressing form. Hence peoples irrational respect for a lifeless body. There are psychological implications. Especially in the pictures where one person is dead and the other is alive. These people paid to have someone make their loved ones rotting remains look vaguely alive again, and sat with them for a keepsake of memory. I'd be curious to know how these people felt, while sitting there next to the source of their grief. How they felt, when looking back at this picture. Knowing that this is a blatant forgery of a shared memory. Judging by the way they arrange them to look alive, it's clearly about pretending. If they only wanted to remember their appearance, they could photograph them in their coffin. It wouldn't matter. Denial is the first stage of grief, so I suppose it makes sense. But grief is a volatile disorder, for the time that it lingers. These pictures are a monument to mental illness. That in itself is both amusing and creepy.
"Grieving is as natural as farting. It's rather unpleasant for those who have to witness it, but it's not a symptom of a sickness, unless it goes on for years and interferes with the social functioning of the individual and/or causes severe upset within the family dynamic."
So true. To change the subject slightly, a family member of mine recently lost 2 of her kids quite suddenly, she went to the doc about smth different and without her even asking for it he offered her antidepressants. That really baffles me...since when did a normal and natural human emotion become a medical condition that needs treatment??
You mean the "Uncanny Valley"? I guess lifelike things are creepy. Uncanny Valley things tend to miss that human quality that leaves them just one step short from being believable.
Well, personally, I don't find these corpse party photos that disturbing. The corpses/subjects look strange, is all, but it doesn't really strike me as out of this world.
"These pictures are a monument to mental illness. That in itself is both amusing and creepy."
That's a rather odd statement. I remember you mentioned once that your emotional awareness is stunted. Is that why you view the grieving process as an illness?
Grieving is as natural as farting. It's rather unpleasant for those who have to witness it, but it's not a symptom of a sickness, unless it goes on for years and interferes with the social functioning of the individual and/or causes severe upset within the family dynamic.
Just like our other processes of elimination, various cultures throughout various periods in history have come up with their rituals, taboos and customs to deal with bereaved families. Your ethnocentrism wrt this topic is disappointing, especially after that excessively long discussion about body hair.
Some of the things that our ancestors have done to mourn their dead also strike me as a little gross, but their practices are understandable with a bit of research into the reasoning process. Women had a 50/50 chance of seeing each newborn infant dead on the labour bed, and a 1 in 3 chance that each child would not live to age 5 back then. Most people didn't live to 60 yo. They were much closer to death back then. Not to mention the lack of mass produced food. Dead people and dead animals were a natural part of life and right up in people's faces and homes prior to the sterilized and hermetically sealed msg preserved 20th C.
Nothing about these people's behaviour appears to be a symptom of mental illness, imo. But unlike you, I don't make that kind of assumption about random people I read about on the internet. I would only speculate about their mental state with some serious research into their family histories.
Nice topic, sensy. This thread is refreshingly well thought out. That's a rare thing on this forum.
It's interesting that the more decayed corpses are less creepy to you. For me they're all creepy, and all the more repulsive if I can imagine more stench and vermin and disease coming off them. Disease. Ew.
btw, I suspect that the women with the blackened hands turned that way when their families shoved them into corsets and stood them upright. Corsets do nasty enough things to living digestive organs. I'm trying hard not to think of what would happen to a half bloated corpse that's been stuffed into whalebone and burlap.
Retch
The source of creepiness for me, I realize, is the categories being blurred. If there is one side, people alive and eating cookies and corpses being in the morgue or cut up for autopsy, fine. But something happens when the line is crossed. When you can't tell on which side something belongs. Is this dead is this alive?
It's a little like dolls that are meant to be cute but look scary, androids or other too life like things or even clowns. They don't belong in the category good or bad, they somehow manage to exist in both.
I'm not sure if it is the same for others, but I think I figured out this is the case for me.
The moral aspect is just secondary for me.