The Aura of the Phonographic Relic: Hearing the Voices of the Dead

In Victorian culture, keeping mementos of deceased loved ones was a common practice. Locks of hair were made into jewelry, and handwritten letters and journals were valued for the signatures they might hold and their past physical intimacy with a loved one. Mentioning the marketing and growing skepticism of hair keepsakes, Lutz notes that "when not infused with the aura of singularity, death keepsakes could become unmoored from their close relationship with one unique body, becoming unstable signs with a representational promiscuity". Lutz discusses how at the turn of the century, just as photography was enabling the mass reproduction of both art and memento mori, the threat of the loss of the aura made the public recognize and cling all the more to the singularity of a relic. Lutz clarifies, "The understanding and subsequent reverence for the aura of art and of death keepsakes came most pervasively only when it was endangered, in decay".