Victorian Mothers Hid Themselves in Their Babies’ Photos

It’s taken for granted nowadays that mothers can photograph their little darlings anytime they like. Capturing every sweet, mischievous expression that crosses a child’s face is made easy by the smartphone camera always within reach. This is, of course, a recent development in motherhood.

Consider instead the hidden mothers of 19th-century photographic-portrait studios, when long exposure times meant moms had to find a way to keep their little ones sitting still long enough to be seen, while also fading into the background themselves.

Because 30-second exposure times and squirming children don’t mix very well, portrait studios often employed women who would help the young subjects stay immobile—while attempting to remain invisible—when mothers weren’t holding their children themselves.

In the resulting images, children float uncannily within textiles that hide a human form, phantom limbs appear with no bodily attachment, and mothers hide their face under weirdly placed curtains or even directly behind their baby. Nearly 200 years before the selfie, mothers were perfecting the selfless.

Alicia Yin Cheng is a partner at MGMT. design, a graphic design studio based in Brooklyn.

Erin Barnett is the Director of Exhibitions and Collections at the International Center of Photography and has curated several exhibitions on 19th-century photography.