Featured Dag W/ Mark?

She does not look dead to me. Dead people's eyes have a vacant look that goes beyond what hers is. Also, who would put a live child in a dead person's arms?

There is a lot of overdoing of the "post mortem" photograph theme. Lots of bad information in online sites. There are knowledgeable collectors of photos of dead people. I listen to them, not random people who may be lying on purpose to try to get more money for common photos that the claim include dead people.

 

Sorry, I am writing with my phone and posted too soon. I did not mean to sound harsh in that last message. It's just that in Facebook photo collector groups, at least once a week or so some unknowing person brings up the idea of obviously live people having been dead when the photo was taken. It is at the point where the longtime collectors sort of roll their eyes and gently (well, some not so gently) point out why it is not true. And some of these people post photos in which the subject was actually deceased. It is easy to tell the difference most of the time.

 

I've found some with smiles lol But I think it's just due to exposure time. Smiling takes a lot of effort especially to hold it for 20 seconds. And they really didn't have too much to be smiling about.

 

Agreed, I had an individual message me about a regular photo of a boy standing, and they told me, "you will get more views if you put "post - Moretem". The child is dead due to the stand behind them". Bless their heart for trying to help me, but they were led astray at some point. The stands have little to do with Post-Mortem photos, yet somehow people are led to believe that's what they are for. It's a tough position to be in, because it's hard to tell them (possibly shedding light on them being ripped off over the years) about it. I feel awful in situations like that. I've also had antique stores etc try to sell me them that way. Saying the stands this and that.

 

As you know, the posing stands were commonly used for almost everybody who was standing in a photo, to hold them still during the exposure. It's really easy to move even slightly when standing... to sway a little, or whatever. And as I've mentioned before, it would be impossible to have a dead person standing up straight like that, short of taxidermy!

I can sympathize with how hard it can be to tell people that they have misunderstood something. Nobody likes to hear something like that, especially in writing from a stranger. And as you said, perhaps they have already purchased something for which they paid more than they should have.

 

Hi,
I have several photos of post mortem and believe me you can tell who's dead. I have one of a great aunt sitting on a sofa with her dead husband. He is "pillowed"
up and she has her arm locked with his. His face is drooping and she is stiffer than he is. I just think they should be kept quiet in a box with the family. The worst one I saw was when I was in high school. A car full of family were smashed by a truck. Someone took a photo of the seven coffins in the same room at the funeral home.
Give me grim faced photos any day.
greg

 

Sold this one about a year ago, probably one of the nicest I've ever had.

 

Well...oddly enough...I learned of these doings here on this site and so I only offer the possibility. Note that nowhere did I say that is what it is.

 

Totally, and it's possible. There are images that do tinker on the edge and are very hard to tell. Many others are easy as pointed out above. I think the relative time of death and when the photo gets taken is important. I had one with info on the back that had the time of death & date, date of burial (2days later). So I think certain photos are probably taken earlier after death than others. The sooner the taken, the harder to tell.

 

Hard to fathom but certainly a way to remember at a time when such things were above most incomes and so they didn't have hundreds of images of each other..

 

I haven't had any post-mortem photos, but do have one RPPC of a baby. I was able to research who he was, and discovered that he died not long afterwards, which I found very sad.

 

Pat, I have had few photos like that... a named small child who I learned had passed away when young. Sometimes I wonder how the photo got out of the family. One thing that occurred to me: the parents died, and perhaps the siblings had, too. The child of course had no descendants, and later generations might not have even heard of the person.

 

How such things get away from the family always bothers me. I have things that should've never left them and I just got a WWII Navy boot camp photo that has an address 2 blocks from me that I'm going to check into.
I have some VHS tapes of family events with children's birthdays, etc. from the 80s that I'm trying to reunite with them.
Got them in a box of free stuff at an 'antique' store.

 

Hi,
My FIL thankfully had all the 8 mil films of the kids growing up put on a CD. Oh course he never thought to put them in order though they are dated.
greg

 

Oh my!
Can you spin that CD on your finger, with a flashlight on it, fast enough to watch it?

 

Sometimes people have dupes too. I once asked about navy stuff at a garage sale and the guy was in the Navy WWII. He pulled out a footlocker full of photos. He said there were many dupes and to make piles of photos only with dupes and he would go through them with me. I was there for hours and then he went through pretty quickly and then gave me what I wanted!!!

 

I'm bothered, too, by historical or personal things that have been separated from families.

I have been able to reunite some items with ancestors... like a guy who bought a couple of used postcards that he thought had been mailed to his grandparents (or great grandparents?). He was really excited about finding them.

When I list postcards or ephemera that have surnames and/or locations I usually put that info in the title. It always feels great to send something back to where it belongs, even if it's just the physical location where it started out.

On a personal note, I have a real dilemma with some of my own items. We don't have kids and no younger relatives we're close to who would be interested in them. Plus I have items that belonged to my uncle, who didn't have children, either. He was a somewhat well-known animator and some of his items may be more collectible if I attribute them to him. I feel funny doing that, though.

 

Sell em all, & donate the money to you favorite charity......or take a holiday.

 

I recently bought a whole box of 1940s love notes at an estate sale. (All the notes were quite short, very repetitive, and written by the woman to the man.) I questioned the estate salesperson about were they sure that the family really didn't want to keep these?? He said there was only one son, who was well aware of the notes' existence, and had basically said, "Sell it all".

Some people just aren't sentimental.