Captured Taboos Direct

For the indigenous subjects, these were . First, the ritual itself was sacred and secret; exposing it to the uninitiated was a spiritual crime. Second, many cultures held the belief that a photograph steals a piece of the soul. To be captured on film was to lose one’s spiritual autonomy.

stands as the first great captured taboo. In an era of high infant mortality, families would pose their deceased children as if sleeping, sometimes even propping their eyes open or painting rosy cheeks on pale skin. Today, we find these images macabre and disturbing; a direct violation of the modern taboo surrounding the physical reality of death. Yet, for the Victorians, these images were holy relics. The taboo was not in capturing death, but in forgetting the dead. Captured Taboos

Why do we create images we are afraid to see? And what happens when a taboo is finally, irrevocably, captured? To understand the captured taboo, we must travel back to the early days of the daguerreotype. In Victorian England, photography was initially a tool for the elite—a means of preserving the stoic, the beautiful, and the memorialized. But very quickly, photographers turned their lenses toward the morgue. For the indigenous subjects, these were