Funerary Photographs as Enduring Kinship and Community Ties in Twentieth-Century Appalachia and Transappalachia: Material and Relational Methods

This research note proposes a relational methodology for examining the production and exchange of funerary photographs in which family and community members posed with the deceased in early twentieth-century Appalachia, and for exploring how this practice expanded through the mid-twentieth century between Appalachian diasporic communities in the industrial Midwest and their family members who remained “at home.” Initially associated with the Victorian period across European and Anglo-American contexts, these photographs evolved to serve crucial social functions in maintaining community ties across geographic distances. This research examines how the materiality and relational properties of these ritual objects were central to their exchange between families separated by economic migration. I draw on the suggestion of Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart to understand photographs as active objects rather than valuing them solely for image content, as well as Marilyn Strathern's work on relationality, which demonstrates that material objects actively constitute rather than merely reflect social relationships.