Tin, Man

I have always had a fascination with the Victorian era. And with early photography. And with Death. These three subjects often overlap, as they do in the book Beyond the Dark Veil: Post Mortem and Mourning Photography from the Thantos Archive, which I read and blogged about earlier this year.

I'm a Caitlin Doughty fangirl too, so I follow her on social media, and she recently posted an article titled The Strange Allure of Decayed Daguerreotypes.

I have more than a few old photographs of people whom I do not know; I have collected them from flea markets and found them in books from thrift stores. I have two tin type pictures that I am especially fond of, and both of them show the same signs of decay as the daguerrotypes in the article.

Both of them came to me; the first one I literally stepped on in a field in Maryland. I was picking through the remainders of the Crumpton auction, and the tintype was face-down in the dirt. I wondered what the small piece of metal might be, and when I flipped it over, I discovered it was a portrait of a baby.

The second one was in a box of dollhouse miniatures that I bought at a church tag sale:

I love how the author of the article explains why these decaying photos have such a haunting quality:

"[They] become, and are changed by, use or experience. The faces become lost, like features reflected in a misted bathroom mirror. The body shapes and small fragments of skin are recognizable but their function or meaning has been usurped by organic patterns of decay which alter the image into strangely beautiful and alluring works of art open to imagination."