My Dad passed two weeks ago today, and now, when seeing some of these photographs and reading this article, I get it. I might not personally need or want a photograph of my Dad's corpse in some pose (I'm quite content, to say the least, to have held his hand through his last breaths, and to have helped lift him onto the stretcher to be hauled off to the crematorium), but I can see why others might feel differently.
I hope you're doing ok.
And yeah, that demystification certainly helped. So did my folks and I (and Dad) sharing a rather macabre sense of humor. Nothing could've prepared me for rigor mortis setting in, though; few things are as weird as a human body being stiff as a log.
If it weren't for these photographs there would be in most cases no surviving image of these children. I can imagine as a parent there would be some burden to give your child's existence some durability.
My first reaction is revulsion. Revulsion at posing corpses as though they were dolls. Revulsion at staying in physical contact with a corpse. A strong sense that it's incredibly disrespectful of the deceased.
I don't think the author is lying about it helping her and some others process their grief. But I have a hard time imagining it working that way for me. And it would take a lot to persuade me that this was okay even if the survivors did find it helpful.
Maybe I missed something redeeming when reading the story?