The daguerreotype was the first form of photography to be announced to the world in Paris in January 1839. They are unique, direct positive images formed on a sheet of highly polished and silvered copper. The process flourished primarily for commercial portraiture and rapidly replaced portrait miniature painting as a record of a loved one and an intimate keepsake. Mememto mori or post mortem daguerreotypes are an important genre within early photography. High rates of infant mortality in the 19th century prompted grieving parents to commission photographers to make a lasting record of their deceased child. Children were often posed as if resting in bed, echoing the trope sometimes seen in sculptural funerary monuments of infant death as temporary sleep before afterlife.