‘For the last time’: the Hiltman-Kinsey post-mortem photographs, 1918–1920

Abstract

Postmortem photography offers important challenges for media and visual specialists developing a critical analysis of intertextuality and visual narratives. This article shows how visual studies of postmortem photography can be expanded and nuanced by considering how cultural logics and historical contexts determine the practice of photographing the dead. I examine postmortem photographs executed between 1918 and 1920 in an immigrant community in the United States, and explain the roles of the photographer and the funeral director in creating these visual narratives. I argue that despite all the professionalism that went into making a community funerary rite memorable, postmortem photographs reveal ambiguity, contradiction and disorderliness, as well as fear, to the inquiring eye.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to those who commented on earlier drafts of this article, Catherine Portuges, Eva Huseby-Darvas, and the two anonymous reviewers of the journal for their very helpful comments. Finally, thanks to Darren Newbury for undertaking the task of providing ideas for revision as well as editoral help finalising my manuscript, and to Julia Burdett for her careful proof-reading. All errors remaining are naturally mine.

Notes

[1] I interviewed Oscar Kinsey several times in the early 1980s while conducting research in Toledo, Ohio. I would like to express my deepest gratitude in his memory, and especially for sharing all the information about early funeral practices in Toledo. He was also kind enough to give me the early post-mortem photographs I include here and provide details about the actual funerals depicted in the pictures.

[2] There are several Internet sites with many excellent early post-mortem photographs, see for example: http://www.jeffagrarian.com/?p=141; the Thanatos Archives: http://thanatos.net/; the Burns Archives: http://www.burnsarchive.com/about/intro.html, and Dan Meinwald's Terminals site: http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/main.html.

[3] Toledo Hungarian ethnic culture was thrust into the national limelight when the 1976 television series M.A.S.H. was aired with the Packo's family restaurant and grocery store selling Hungarian hotdogs and homemade goods with the ‘old-world flavour’. The photographs in this study, however, pre-date that of the famous restaurant of Tony Packo's which opened in 1932. On ‘the family restaurant see information available: http://www.tonypacko.com/index.php.

[4] Protestants were already active in the 1890s, their church being completed in 1903; St Michael's Greek (Byzantine) Catholic church was completed in 1912, its funeral association (organised in 1902) counted 427 members in 1917. Roman Catholics also organised their sick and benefit society in 1899, and their church was built in 1914 (Török 1978, 295). Among the benefits societies The Workers’ Benefit Society, The American-Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Association, and The Verhovay Benefit Association were the most important (Puskás 1982).

[5] It is important to emphasise, however, that many of these Hungarian immigrants were born in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and emigrated from areas that were transferred to Slovakia, Romania and the Ukraine after 1920 (Puskás 1982, 495).

[6] Shipping the bodies of the deceased back to the ‘old-country’ was extremely rare, as working-class families could not afford expensive overseas fares or shipping costs at that time. In addition, the practice of cremation was not accepted among most Catholic immigrants at that time. Another reason was the new international geopolitics: since the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was dissolved and Hungary truncated after 1920 with many counties attached to new states, there was really no more ‘home’ to which immigrants could return.

[7] For the role of funeral homes and funeral directors in America see the studies by Bowman (1959), Farrell (1980), Pine (1975) and Smith (1996). For photograps in Hungarian-American communities see Hoppál (1989).

[8] These recollections by Barbara Török were published in ‘Még egyszer’ Hiltman – The Photographer, submitted by Barbara Torok’, Birmingham 10th Ethnic Festival, August 19, 1984, 30.

[9] The practice of dating photographs is discussed by Dahlgren (2010).

[10] Today's immigrant funerals show only faint signs of earlier ones, see the studies of Fejős (1991) and Huseby-Darvas (2003, 58).

[11] The Kinsey funeral home was a real ethnic family enterprise: started by Stephen, then taken over by the son, Oscar; after his death his wife, Hazel, and daughter Mariska, continued the trade. In 2000, the Kinsey establishment was incorporated into another family business, the Eggleston-Meinhert-Pavley Funeral Home, one of the largest funeral businesses in Nortwest Ohio.

[12] See the funeral picture online at: http://images2.toledolibrary.org/getimage.asp?image=/images/ndrive/Z000/Z00011/Z0001105.jpg (last accessed 2010-11-17).

[13] See, for example, the study of Man Ray's pictures by Fer (1994) where the central themes can be also restated.

[14] Bernd Hüppauf (1995, 117) analyses First World War photographs and calls attention to the fact that the photographs represent very little of the actual reality of the battlefields.

[15] On the ironic aspects of photographs see Sayers, Bathurst and Symonds (2007).

[16] Women's separate roles from those of men can be easily witnessed in post-mortem pictures; on Hungarian gender roles see my analysis (Kürti 1996, 148–63).

[17] Bazin argues similarly (1967, 13).