Weird Children’s Portraits from the 1800s

When commercial photography became available to the public in the 1800s, wealthy families started the now age-old and irritatingly ubiquitous practice of photographing their children. However, the photographs required said children to sit still, sometimes for up to 15 minutes in order to properly expose the film. Since that’s impossible for kids to do, mothers or fathers would sit in the portraits holding them, and many times they would be covered in black cloths, curtains or rugs. Sometimes the photographer would scratch their faces out of the photos or black them out, and everyone looking at it would pretend that they couldn’t see the figure looming behind the baby. The result is a very creepy collection of Victorian photography, very of its time considering that many people would also have photos of their dead relatives on their walls…

Photos via Ellen Greene