Photography has come a long way, and the journey is filled with some truly bizarre twists. If you thought today’s selfie craze was odd, you’ll be amazed by the 10 strange interesting tricks photographers used in the early days of the medium. From eerie post‑mortem portraits to pigeons with tiny cameras, these forgotten fads reveal a wilder side of photographic history.
Why These 10 Strange Interesting Photography Fads Still Captivate Us
10 Postmortem Photography
Postmortem photography was a macabre genre in which living relatives arranged a portrait with the corpse of a departed family member. Popular throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, these images served as the sole visual record many families ever possessed of their loved ones.
Because photographic plates were costly and everyday snapshots were rare, families often waited until a death to commission a portrait. The result was frequently the only photograph ever taken of the deceased, turning a mournful necessity into a lasting keepsake.
The practice thrived when most people died at home, and the high infant mortality rate meant many of the subjects were children. Tiny tots were dressed in their finest clothes, surrounded by flowers or toys, and sometimes cradled by their mothers, creating pictures that looked eerily like peaceful naps.
For older children and adults, photographers employed belts, pulleys, and levers to prop the bodies upright, even staging them as if they were standing. Glass eyes were occasionally added to give the illusion of a gaze, though the lifeless stare often gave the photographs away.
Transportation delays and the onset of rigor mortis forced photographers to become adept at handling stiff bodies. Families sometimes summoned the studio before death, but even when photographers arrived after rigor mortis set in, their skill in manipulating the corpse ensured a dignified image.
As medical advances extended life expectancy and hospitals replaced home deaths, the need for postmortem portraits waned. Cheaper cameras and the proliferation of everyday photographs further erased the demand for this grim tradition.
9 Hidden Mother Photography
Early cameras required long exposure times—often 30 seconds or more—forcing subjects to remain perfectly still. Adults could manage this, but getting a child to hold a pose for that long was nearly impossible.
To solve the problem, mothers would hide behind curtains, drape themselves in matching fabrics, or even pose as furniture, all while cradling their children. Their concealed presence kept the youngsters steady without appearing in the final image.
8 Spirit Photography
Spirit photography emerged from the same long‑exposure constraints that birthed hidden mothers. Photographers aimed to capture ethereal, semi‑transparent figures—ghosts—by ensuring subjects stayed utterly still.
In 1861, William H. Mumler pioneered a method that consistently produced ghostly apparitions. He is believed to have placed a pre‑exposed glass plate containing a faint image of a “spirit” in front of a fresh plate, creating the illusion of a translucent presence beside the living subject.
Mumler marketed these images as genuine proof of the afterlife, attracting clients like Mary Todd Lincoln, who wanted a photograph with Abraham Lincoln’s spirit. However, investigations revealed he often stole existing portraits to fabricate his ghosts, leading to public scandal and the collapse of his career despite a legal acquittal.
7 Smileless Photographs
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, smiling was virtually nonexistent in portraiture. Photographers treated photography as an extension of fine art, where a neutral, natural expression was deemed appropriate.
The prevalence of postmortem photography reinforced this aesthetic. Since many images were the sole visual memory of a deceased person, a calm, composed look was preferred over any overt emotion.
Long exposure times also discouraged smiles; maintaining a steady mouth for half a minute was difficult, so subjects opted for a simple, steady expression to avoid blur.
Victorian social mores even labeled smiling as the sign of a fool. Consequently, a serious, stoic visage became the cultural norm for a photograph.
6 Headless Portraits
Long before Photoshop, early photographers experimented with physical cut‑and‑paste techniques to create surreal images. By meticulously trimming and recombining negatives, they could craft fantastical scenes.
Swedish photographer Oscar Rejlander pioneered the “headless portrait” genre in the 19th century, producing images where subjects appeared without heads, often holding their own decapitated cranium on a platter or in their hands.
Some compositions added a blood‑stained knife, heightening the dramatic effect. While modern software makes such tricks trivial, achieving this in the darkroom required painstaking precision and imagination.
5 Builder’s Photo
Locomotive and automobile manufacturers produced “builder’s photos” (also called official photos) to showcase new or upgraded models. These shots typically displayed the front and side of the machine, often stripped of carriages or background clutter.
To ensure the monochrome images looked striking, factories painted locomotives a neutral gray for the camera, while bright colors were applied to parts that would render lighter in black‑and‑white, creating contrast that highlighted design details.
These photographs adorned company offices, featured on postcards, and served as advertising material. Enthusiasts collected them as “roster shots,” preserving a visual catalog of engineering progress.
4 Pigeon Photography
In 1907, Dr. Julius Neubronner patented a miniature camera that could be strapped to a homing pigeon. A built‑in timer triggered the shutter during flight, capturing images from the bird’s aerial perspective.
This invention marked a breakthrough in early aerial photography, producing some of the first true bird‑eye views. Prior methods relied on balloons or kites, which were slower and limited in range.
Ironically, Neubronner’s original goal wasn’t to create a surveillance tool but to document the routes his messenger pigeons took, offering a practical way to verify their journeys.
Despite its novelty, the pigeon camera suffered from randomness—images were taken at unpredictable moments—making it less reliable than the emerging airplane photography of World War I.
3 Manual Retouching
Victorians, eager to look their best, turned to hands‑on editing long before digital tools existed. They used sharpened pencils to reinforce outlines and blunt pencils to lighten shadowed areas on the glass plate negatives.
Sharp graphite emphasized body contours, while softer leads brightened darker regions, especially the cheeks, which tended to appear overly shadowed in the final print.
Such meticulous retouching was commonplace; almost every portrait underwent some degree of hand‑editing to achieve the desired aesthetic.
2 Hand‑Colored Photographs
Before reliable color film, photographers added hue by hand‑painting black‑and‑white prints. Johann Baptist Isenring pioneered this technique, applying pigments and gum arabic directly onto the image.
Other artists, such as Japanese photographer Yokohama Matsusaburo—who also worked as a painter and lithographer—joined the trend, producing richly tinted photographs that fascinated viewers.
The hand‑coloring craze peaked in the early 20th century but quickly faded once stable color emulsions and prints became widely available in the 1950s.
1 Red Shirt School Of Photography
After color photography matured, a curious fad known as the “Red Shirt School” emerged. Various magazines were accused of deliberately inserting vivid red items—shirts, umbrellas, or accessories—into their spreads to grab readers’ attention.
Rumors suggested that photographers traveled with a stash of red props, strategically placing them in compositions to create eye‑catching focal points. National Geographic was among the publications alleged to have popularized the practice.
When color images first captivated the public in the 1950s, editors realized that vivid hues could dominate a viewer’s gaze, often eclipsing composition or narrative. Consequently, they prioritized striking colors like red to make their pages pop.
This deliberate color bias shaped photo‑journalism for a decade, but by the 1960s the trend waned as audiences grew more sophisticated and began valuing substance over sensational color.