Memento Mori: Album cover photo shoot

Got my album cover shoot back from Marzena today, and I am very pleased with the pictures.  In this blog post I will share several of the images as well as my inspiration for the shots.  Several of the songs on the album are very dark ("Vampire," "Speak of the Devil," and "Purblind") and I wanted an album cover that reflected that darkness.

I recently became intrigued by Victorian Era Memento Mori photography, which is a Latin phrase which translates to something like "remember your mortality." With the invention of the Daguerreotype in 1839 (I won't try to summarize this photographic process, but in my understanding it is a latent image produced on a copper plate by the chemical process of heating mercury vapor... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotype), photography became less expensive.  When family members lost a loved one (which happened often, unsurprising considering the state of medical science), they would often have a picture taken to remember them by.  In one type of this post-mortem photography, the subject would be posed as if they were sleeping.  In another type, they would be posed as if they were alive, with eyes painted on their closed eyelids.  Infant mortality was extremely high at this time, so there are many examples of deceased babies.

My first shot was inspired by this painting I discovered while recording my MagiCat album:

I am embarrassed to admit that I have no idea who painted this picture, or where on the web I got it from, so if you have the proper attribution information please let me know.  I was intrigued by this image for many reasons--there is an entire fairytale told in this one image for me.  I also loved that the woman was blonde (as I was at the time), was sitting on a red velvet fainting sofa exactly like mine, and had the same exact cat as me.  Here is the photo we took:

As you can see, we adapted the image to the memento mori theme, chose a darker palette for the dress, and incorporated the cat, the couch and the mask.  Also, the panels of the screen are reminiscent in my mind of the window in the image.

The next image is an example of infant memento mori:

(http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/history/news-victorian-memento-mori-photographing-dead)
I love this picture.  The composition is so exquisitely beautiful and peaceful, but, of course, heartbreaking, since we know the baby is deceased.  Here is the image we took:

We couldn't bring ourselves to pose my son, Dashel, as if he was deceased, so in this image, I am deceased and he is my living child.  Note the eyes painted on my lids.

Finally, here is an example of memento mori with the painted on eyelids:

(http://brightbytes.com/collection/memento.html) There is something so disturbing and haunting about this photo for me.  Here is our version:

Didn't Regina do an amazing job painting on my eyes?

I'm very curious to hear what you all think of the photos.  Please leave me a comment below!