Remember the dead

In the late 19th century, Boston photographer William H. Mumler posed his subjects by a window in his studio – grieving fathers, distraught lovers, even Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of Abraham Lincoln. Mumler’s customers paid good money ($10, or around $370 today) not just to see their own portrait, but also their loved ones, the dear departed hovering above them in the backdrop of the photograph. When Mary Lincoln received her portrait from the spirit photographer, framed behind her was...