Photographing the dead in their coffins (No I didn’t put such a picture in my post)

[Milspec]

After attending 3 funerals of family members over the past year, I will say that the body hardly resembled the person in life. I would not want a photo of that at all.

As for creepy or strange? There is a cremation service in my area that only performs cremations, no funerals, just lights them up. On their web page, they actually post pictures of their latest "customers" like a siding contractor would post pictures of their recent work to show their skill. Maybe showing a really fat guy and proudly stating that they could handle his big azz generates business?

If it was me, I would not take such photos.

 

[O- Fender]

I have done it. I was asked to.

A friend's brother died. The family wanted to take a photo for the family back in "The Old Country " (Finland).
They were understandingly distaught and wondering how to best do it and asked me, since they knew I was a decent photographer. This was back in the age not long after t-rex died out, when not everyone had email and few had digital cameras. Smart phones were only something you read about in magazines.
There was no way I wanted to take something like that to get developed at Walmart.
I remember I had to explain I could take the pics and burn the to cd Later, his mother was blown away when I showed her on my friend's dvd player.
Anyway, I got into the church before anyone showed up. The funeral director acted like he saw it all the time, so who knew?

It felt strange. I burned 3 copies. One was kept by the family, one sent to relatives in BC, who couldn't make the service. One was sent overseas. I kept a copy on my hard drive just in case but deleted asap.

My friend updated me with all the feedback. The photos provided comfort for many. It was weird. I am proud I did it and will do it again if necessary.

 

[Fretting out]

It is better than ending up like Trigger...

I’d rather be trigger than the dog beside them or the other horse no one remembers…..


I saw trigger, didn’t seem too weird at the time

 

[teletail]

On another note, why settle for a photo when you can cast a plaster death mask, right there! Nowadays you could 3D print one for all your relatives.

I've read about people cutting the tattoos off of dead people, having them preserved and then framing them. You can just take a picture of mine.

 

[tele_savales]

I want to the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy. It was pretty sobering.

 

[SnidelyWhiplash]

Very common a couple of generations ago. My grandmother kept a death photo of my uncle who died in a car accident in the late 50s with her till the day she died. She said it brought her comfort.

 

[Chester P Squier]

On another note, why settle for a photo when you can cast a plaster death mask, right there! Nowadays you could 3D print one for all your relatives.

On one of the last Byrds' albums, Byrdmaniax, the album cover had the Byrds members' "death masks" (actually life masks, since they were all still alive at the time).

The masks sort of looked like my deceased friend that my wife photographed.

It is better than ending up like Trigger.

Seems like Dale Evans once told her husband, Roy Rogers, that when he dies, she was going to do to him what he did to Trigger. Apparently, she didn't go through with it.

 

[Fendereedo]

My great grandparents owned a photo of them and their deceased 13 year old daughter Rose. I don't know what happened to it, and didn't actually know she was dead, until my grandmother told me. For some reason it initially gave me the chills, then I thought about how at peace Rose looked sitting propped between her parents.

 

[Chester P Squier]

Not how I want to be remembered. Maybe they should think about snapping a picture while the person is still living.

I think that's one of the reasons I take a lot of pictures. I take them of people while they are still alive.

 

[4 Cat Slim]

I don't think photographing the dead in their coffins is a good idea.
At my paternal grandmother's funeral (March 1967), a distant cousin made a grand and dramatic entrance to the funeral chapel, letting her loud, bone-chilling keening fill the room as other mourners allowed her to the front of the line.
Once there, the cries abruptly stopped. She took an instamatic camera (equipped with flashcubes, if you recall those) from her purse, and SNAP one SNAP two SNAP three (from a low angle) then backed up a foot or so and SNAP took her fourth shot. She ejected the spent flashcube, put the camera back in her purse, then began her creepy wailing once more for a few more minutes until somebody told her to knock it off.
I'll never forget this. It happened decades ago, and I can remember the genuine outrage that some of my father's family expressed over this. I bet that the poor folks at the lab who had to process this film must've been impressed.

 

[Willie Johnson]

Either this is a case of "that was just their way in the olden times and whatnot," or your nanna was a serial killer. Prolly the olden times thing.

 

[Sparky2]

It's creepy as hell.

Just say no.

 

[Mike Eskimo]

 

[Skully]

My stepmother insisted on having an open casket for my father, which is something he never would've wanted. It was ghastly and I did not take photos.

That said, I did take photos of my father in the hospital bed after he died. It was not pretty -- particularly the way the sides of his mouth were pulled down like he was in a wind tunnel -- and I don't want to to look at them now, but... I know they're available to see.

 

[Toto'sDad]

Anybody ever take a picture of a deceased person lying in their coffin? One of my two grandmas used to do this regularly. I never did see her actually taking the pictures, but I did see several of the pictures she had taken. Maybe it has to do with the fact that she lived to 102 years of age and outlived most other human beings.

The reason for this post is that we recently attended a funeral of a friend of ours. He was 79 years old, and one of his loved ones was unable to make it to his funeral (long soap-opera story I’m not going into). She asked my wife to please take a picture of the man in his coffin and send it to her.

Now, me, I’ve never taken a picture of a dead person in their coffin. I've taken a lot of pictures in my lifetime, but never of dead people. And neither has my wife. I think it’s creepy!

At the visitation before the funeral, my wife mentioned the request to a friend of ours, who appeared open to the idea but recognizing how morbid the idea might sound. We didn’t ask this friend, a widow, if she had taken a picture of her late husband lying in his coffin.

So, she and my wife went up to the coffin, their bodies together concealing the fact that my wife was taking a picture of the deceased, fulfilling the request. Using her iPhone, the picture was unintentionally and most ironically made in “Live” mode.

I had to save the pictures on the desktop computer and then put them back on my wife’s iPhone, not in “live” mode. She picked one and texted it to our friend, who by now is living out of state.

And no, I am definitely NOT going to post the picture in the “Random Daily Photos” thread. For ANY month. You're welcome. I think it’s rather creepy to take a picture of a dead body.

What do YOU think of photographing the dead in their coffins?

None of what I wrote could be considered anything but drivel. My apologies.

 

[Jakedog]

I imagine it was quite common 100 years ago.

I personally don’t think that much about it.

It’s just the husk-the inside is gone.

This. I think a large part of people being hung up on dead bodies is that they still think of them as people. They’re not. The person who lived in there is long gone.

Dead body, live body, friend, foe, family, doesn’t matter. It’s just stuff. When the person vacates it, it’s just so much leftover meat.

I think it would be creepy if someone were doing it to intentionally upset someone or freak them out. Or if they were getting some kind of perverted rise out of it. But otherwise, nah.

I wouldn’t personally want a pic of a dead loved one’s empty vessel. I’d rather look at the pics of them from when they were still them. But I’ve seen and heard a lot weirder stuff in my day than “send me a coffin pic since I can’t be there.”

 

[Brian J.]

I see no issue with a family member wanting a last picture of a dear loved one, the memory fades a photo can last indefinitely

 

[wildschwein]

My wife and I lost our 2 month old daughter this year due to complications from hydops/chylothorax brought about by a de novo instance of Noonan Syndrome. The pictures we have of our dear girl after she passed are very valuable to us.

 

[TeleTex82]

Gonna need a heck of a filter for that picture...

 

[wildschwein]

Gonna need a heck of a filter for that picture...

No it's quite beautiful and my wife is kissing her just moment after she took her last breath. Lottie was our first baby and everything was normal with the pregnancy until fluid was spotted on the lungs via ultrasound at 32 weeks in January this year. After that Lottie was born by C section and fought for 2 months to live in the NICU but lost her fight due to malnutrition caused by chyle fluid losses that were being drained from her lungs via tubes. We spent every moment inthe NICU with her we could. She lived her life on mechanical respiration and is the bravest person I have known.