The Victorian Era is known for its rather interesting pastimes, but one of the more macabre activities was sitting for headless portraits, known as the art of headless portraiture. With camera and film technology still in its infancy, photographers actively worked to advance their knowledge, and this allowed them to hone their skills in a pre-Photoshop world. Just because the nature of the photographs was morbid doesn’t mean those involved didn’t have fun. The individual being photographed – the “sitter” – sat for a couple of photos, allowing the photographer to have a number of samples to work with while in the editing room. Depending on the direction they wanted to take, the sitter could be shown holding their decapitated head in a variety of poses. Some kept it simple, holding their head in their hands or by their hair, while others were more creative, holding their head in one hand and the weapon used in their “murder” in the other. Some even had it look as if their heads were being served to them on a platter. The difficult part of the process came during editing. To create the illusion that the sitter was, indeed, headless, the photographer had to combine the photos by cutting and pasting them into one final image, which allowed it to appear as though only one had been taken. The demand for such photographs was so high that many Victorian photographers openly advertised this particular type of photography in newspapers.
