Adding deceased relatives to photos

Well - I was wondering whether you meant dead or alive!

This is link to some of the Victorian pics where they did add the deceased. Warning: doesn't make for comfortable viewing.

www.viralnova.com/post-mortem-victorian-photographs/

We've just done a family wall of photos taken over many years. Unfortunately I never met my father in law. My father passed away over 20yrs ago. It gives me peace of mind and lots of happy memories to see my dad and the dad I never met.

Wordsworth wrote a poem "We are seven" about a little girl who insists that her family consists of seven - although two of them are sleeping in the chburchyard.

He lost a daughter before she was four - Catherine Wordsworth (who may have had Downs syndrome )

I think it is very healthy to have a picture of a departed child or relative, but to add them to photos of the living is deeply disturbing/disturbed in my view.

My son was born prematurely and the nurses in the the Special Care Baby Unit took a photo of him for me to have by my bed on the ward. I was fortunate that he survived and is now a strapping six foot+ young man but I do still remember how comforting it was to have that photo always by me whilst we were separated.

On the original topic, however, we had a speaker at our WI recently who specialised in digitally enhancing photographs. She tolds us how she set about this and some of the many changes she had been asked to make to photographs. This included removing or adding family members for a huge number of reasons including subsequent divorce and bereavements but she did say that the most poignant change she had been asked to make was to add in a young lad who had predeceased his sibling. She had found it very challenging personally to carry out the task. However, the family who had asked her to make the change felt it completed their family photo so it must have given them some consolation.

Those photos are disturbing Katek but I can understand why they were done.
I think that adding the deceased to current photos isn't something I'd consider but for those who gain comfort from it, why not?

Certainly having a photo of a stillborn baby is very comforting for the parents, but not necessarily for public viewing.

Photography was not an everyday thing for the Victorians. Maybe they had no picture of the deceased person, taken when they were alive.
It could have seemed a way to honour a person's memory in an era when untimely death was far more common than now.

When I read the OP I thought "how creepy" about adding people to photographs nowadays. Seeing that wedding picture, tho, it seems touching to include a family member who should be there. I even like the ghostly look of the boy.

I wouldn't have a picture like that myself but I can understand people doing it.

I saw the photo on the Daily Mail website and thought it was strange, but that's probably because I've not heard of doing that before. I can see why someone might want to do it and in fact, given how long we've been able to edit photos on home computers, I'm surprised it hasn't been done years ago.

Personally I am not sure if I would want to do something like this, but perhaps that's because I have not had a loss where I would consider the possibility. So I don't think I can say I would never have it done.

The photographing of dead people, particularly children, isn't new. The Victorians did it all the time. Personally, I wouldn't want such a photograph when I'm likely to have others of when the person was still alive and the idea of photoshopping a dead relative into a later family gathering is bizarre.

As for babies, if it gives comfort to the parents then why not? And its good that the medical profession have stopped acting as though these tiny ones didn't matter.

My mother had a baby just after WW2 who died at a few days old. Sadly the baby was taken away and buried in an unknown grave. She was told to get over it, relatives squabbled over the unneeded baby clothes and crib. Worse still she had to go to her post natal check up with all the mothers who had their babies with them. It didn't stop her being a lovely Mum to me and my brother, but she told me that first baby was often in her thoughts. How much would a photograph have meant to her!
However in regard to deceased relatives being photoshopped in, one of her siblings wanted to do that in a family photograph and she was horrified. If it helps those who are left, fair enough. But on a personal level, I think it quite macabre and would never want to do it.

Purpledaffodil if the baby was buried in a local council cemetery you may be able to pinpoint the spot. If not for your Mum now for you, if you wished to. My Mum's stillborn baby was buried with other infants, 3 deep. The council were able to give me the exact position and it's just a neatly mown little green space amongst gravestones. My sibling was still born in the fifties but I would have thought there were records much earlier. Although not well at that point my Mum visited the grave with me and was relieved it was not, as she had always feared, a corner covered in shadow, forgotten. She never told my Dad she had visited, they just could not bring up any conversation of their first born between them.
I found the link to the Victorian pictures very moving, very sad but as mentioned Victorians were used to death, it wasn't hidden away, it didn't harden them, those poor parents and siblings but it was all around. My very elderly neighbour, now long dead was one of those women who would wash your deceased relative, lay pennies, dress the relative for you. This would have been in the 20's - even 50's early 60's I think.

I suppose that one reason for the victorians having their dead relatives photographed would be that they wouldn't have had any photo's of them previously but wanted something to remember them by.

I can quite understand someone wanting a photo of their stillborn baby, but I think it would be something I would keep for myself rather than displaying it.

Thanks Jamjar1. Both my parents are dead now, so I cannot ask which cemetery my sister was buried in and do not have any exact details of dates or name. How lovely that you were able to help your mother like that.

Ah! I did wonder, my goodness how harrowing and all not so very long ago. Yet your Mum never forgot her baby all her days Purpledaffodil

I think this is a good idea, as well as an interesting experience if you're into photo editing!

I too find it macabre, but if it gives any sort of comfort to the bereaved...

We were recently in Amsterdam, where in one of the big museums, maybe the Rijksmuseum, there was a painting of an obviously newly dead baby of maybe 6 months, lying in its cradle.
I dare say that in the days before photography the parents felt the need of a lifelike reminder, and who could blame them? So sad to see, though.

So that's why pics of my ancestors look as though they've been dug up------they probably were !!

The Victorians didn't add just deceased children. This 1937 double portrait in The Scottish National Gallery includes a deceased wife.
www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/3024/john-gibson-lockhart-1794-1854-and-charlotte-sophia-scott-mrs-lockhart-1799-1837-post-humous?search=double%20portrait&search_set_offset=17

It's one thing remembering how the deceased looked like/ were in their lives, but to me it's distinctly macabre to photograph them in their deceased state.

I always say I have five children, three are still with me two are angels. I didn’t have pictures taken, it never occurred to me, and it was never offered, though I did hold my last son for a few minutes, I didn’t want longer, though I now some people do. I knit “angel blankets” for the local hospital so the tiny babies have something special to be wrapped in if the parents wish, they are always asking for more so people must use them.

It would never occur to me to add people to photos, they aren’t there, maybe that sounds hard but they’re not, only in people’s memories. My dad use to take photos and then digitally change them, it was in the early days of photoshop, he use to add a boat, or remove a tree, make the day look sunny that sort of thing, but to me, if it’s overcast so be it, your recording the time, it should be how it was, not how you would like it.

I also like to watch the photo editing guides on YouTube, so this list was helpful to me fixthephoto.com/blog/retouch-tips/top-10-youtube-channels-study-editing-free.html

I think it is very healthy to href="https://blog.gradguard.com/2019/02/27/how-to-travel-around-europe-on-a-budget/">have</a> a picture in your home!

I think it is very healthy to have a picture in your home!
blog.gradguard.com/2019/02/27/how-to-travel-around-europe-on-a-budget/