The photograph of the deceased was a manifestation of the mortuary art of great value in some sectors of Medellín's society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are two central themes, closely linked when it comes to this practice: photography, as a physical-chemical process with an aesthetic concern, and death, as a biological and sociocultural fact, which produces a reaction in the bereaved for the loss of a to be loved. The photograph of the deceased belongs to a modern symbolic construction of death.
