Memento Mori

This is a tribute to the great Victorian photographer, Henry Robinson, who was able to capture striking, beautiful, and controversial images with, what we would call today, primitive photography. Among his works was two very famous pieces that depict a more morbid and emotional aspect of the human life. These images are respectfully titled, Fading Away and She Never Told Her Love, and portray the same female model in two similar situations. The more popular Fading Away, is a visual narrative showing a grieving family surrounding a young girl dying from tuberculosis, in the other image, the girl is also dying from the disease, but regrets not telling her romantic interest her feelings. Each image is so emotionally driven and struck such a chord with so many people that they were considered controversial at the time. However, this only led to their popularity, and are now some of the most famous early photographs ever taken.  (To learn more about Henry Robinson go here! --> www.kiberpipa.org/~igzebedze/d… )

The image I am creating a tribute to is the lesser known of the two, She Never Told Her Love. I chose this one because of the dramatic atmosphere and calm solitude of the model in the photograph. The picture is so convincing that one would simply guess that this was a memento mori picture (a popular tradition in the Victorian Era to take photos of dead loved ones), yet it's staged atmosphere gives it much more character. 

Original Image -->farm4.staticflickr.com/3381/33…

Sorry if this was depressing for all of you I just had an itch to draw Andre again, and this seemed to fit well with the time frame and theme of his novel, The Addison Diary. 

~Chrissy