As soon as photography was invented, people wanted to make trick photographs. One of the most popular tricks was making 'headless' portraits.
It is not quite as subtle as the airbrushing and digital touching-up we're accustomed to seeing in modern-day magazines.
But these funny pictures show how the practice of photo trickery stretches back to the Victorian era.
Nineteenth-century photographers combined multiple negatives to create the novelty snaps that caused a sensation when first published.
And many of them seem to have had a peculiar interest in decapitation.
In one snap, what looks like a headless man sits in a chair with his head on a plate.
Another holds his bonce under his arm in an eerie and bizarre shot.
One image shows a man holding his wife's head as she stands beside him.
And a Victorian gentleman stands upright with a cane and his head tucked into his body.
There is also a snap of a woman who appears to have completely lost her noggin, with it nowhere to be seen in the picture.
Photo manipulation became something of a craze in the Victorian era, 100 years before the internet.
Some illusions and tricks created by hand, thanks to cutting and layering negatives.
Some playful photographers cleverly worked out how to make people look like giants or dwarfs.
Other common images showed people appearing to float in mid-air unaided.
Victorians also practised a more macabre photographic tradition: the art of post-mortem pictures.
One thing is for sure, they had a sense of humor. And as you can see, some photographers were more clever, than others.
The Victorians also enjoyed humor and costumes in their photos - they were extremely eccentric and quirky and sometimes had a very creepy effect.
Books such as "Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversion including Trick Photography" published in 1897 contained diagrams for creating illusions such as decapitations, multiples, and spirit photographs.
It is not quite as subtle as the airbrushing and digital touching-up we're accustomed to seeing in modern-day magazines.
But these funny pictures show how the practice of photo trickery stretches back to the Victorian era.
Nineteenth-century photographers combined multiple negatives to create the novelty snaps that caused a sensation when first published.
And many of them seem to have had a peculiar interest in decapitation.
In one snap, what looks like a headless man sits in a chair with his head on a plate.
Another holds his bonce under his arm in an eerie and bizarre shot.
One image shows a man holding his wife's head as she stands beside him.
And a Victorian gentleman stands upright with a cane and his head tucked into his body.
There is also a snap of a woman who appears to have completely lost her noggin, with it nowhere to be seen in the picture.
Photo manipulation became something of a craze in the Victorian era, 100 years before the internet.
Some illusions and tricks created by hand, thanks to cutting and layering negatives.
Some playful photographers cleverly worked out how to make people look like giants or dwarfs.
Other common images showed people appearing to float in mid-air unaided.
Victorians also practised a more macabre photographic tradition: the art of post-mortem pictures.
One thing is for sure, they had a sense of humor. And as you can see, some photographers were more clever, than others.
The Victorians also enjoyed humor and costumes in their photos - they were extremely eccentric and quirky and sometimes had a very creepy effect.
Books such as "Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversion including Trick Photography" published in 1897 contained diagrams for creating illusions such as decapitations, multiples, and spirit photographs.
Music: "On the Ground" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Source: Mirror , PicsinPics.
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