I don’t see anything inherently wrong about it, but it has just never occurred to me that someone would take pictures at a funeral. It’s just not something I would want to remember.
I can see how photos of the deceased would be interesting to some people. It’s human nature to have morbid fascination with death to some extent. Also the photos lend a certain finality to the subject.
What I cannot relate to is having the desire to take photos of close friends or relatives or even pets that have passed. I imagine that to take them and look at them later must take a great deal of emotional distancing and ability to detach one self from the subject (image).
Nah, I’d be afraid it would end up on an internet porn site - rule 34 and all.
I don’t think it’s creepy, but I don’t think I’ll have any inclination to do it when my loved ones’ time comes. It’s not the way I’d prefer to remember them.
I’ve had pictures like that shown to me a couple of times. In both cases it was by parents who had lost a child suddenly. One was taken after a birth that was not supposed to be complicated and the other was taken before the funeral of a 37-year-old man who was shot during an altercation with an off-duty police officer. I think there were sort of similar motivations in each case: One last moment with someone you didn’t expect would be gone so soon.
I have never done it, nor have I had occasion to do it. We mostly don’t do funerals or open caskets in my family so I’ve never been somewhere that I might take the picture of the deceased.
The only two dead people I’ve seen were my father and my grandmother at the time of their passing. I was grieving to much to think of snapping a picture of them in that state.
OP, you seem comfortable with death; just curious why you use the euphemism “passed”?
My father did take pictures of my mom in her casket and emailed them to me without a real warning. I looked long enough to see what they were and then delete them. Images tend to stick in my head and I don’t want to remember her like that. But I have pictures of my (alive) Nana which I don’t like to look at either because she was wasting away and I don’t want to remember her like that.
But it’s not because I am freaked out by death – I miss my mom but I’m glad she died before she was sick for too long.
don’t forget your camera.
Dead Puerto Rico boxer posed standing in the ring
I myself have never taken such a photo. Six months ago I’d have said “No way!” However, having gone through some losses recently I am now inclined not to judge how anyone else deals with it. If I thought a photo would bring me comfort I would take one, and not care what anyone thought.
Laying out the body is not traditional in my family or church. I’ve never been to a service with an open casket. I’ve never been in the position of being with a loved one as he or she was passing on.
My Dad took pictures of my (30 year old) brother in his casket. He did it the morning of the funeral, when no one else was there. He told me that he was going to do it and that I was welcome to them if I so desired. I do not. He told me he was taking them not so much because he wanted to but because “tomorrow I won’t be able to change my mind”. I get that. Better to have them and not want them than want them and not have them. He also told me that the funeral director told him that it is commonplace. This was in the small village where I grew up.
My parents are long divorced and I have never felt the need to tell my mother of their existence. I am not sure my Dad’s wife knows they exist. She would not approve. I am curious about them, but not enough to ask to see them.
Actually, I’m not sure. Sometimes I say ‘passed,’ and other times I say ‘died.’ It seems to be almost random, as if I just say the one which happens to pop out of my mouth at the time.
The last time this came up for me was when my aunt died. Someone took pictures of the open casket and sent them around to the entire family. Some of us (like my sisters and I) were horrified/offended/squicked out but most (maybe about 2/3) of the family were grateful for them.
It’s a big fat case of YMMV. I can’t imagine why anyone would do it, but I guess there’s a sizable chunk of people for whom it’s part of the mourning process.
I’ve never even wanted to see a dead person at a funeral, let alone had the desire to photograph one. Thankfully, all the funerals I’ve been to haven’t shown the actual dead body on display, and if they had, I probably wouldn’t have a look.
My grandfather’s siblings took photos, and I didn’t think it was creepy, but very, very odd.
I understand all the reasons why others do it but I don’t. I prefer not to go to viewings as well, if it can be avoided. Funerals, sure.
And let’s all agree that a picture of a dead animal of any kind should be prefaced w/ a description thereof. Do I want to see your family’s photos? Sure! But please tell me **before **I’m looking at the picture that the baby everyone’s touching in the middle was stillborn.
I have a whole other thing about hunting trophy pictures in auto-refreshing Facebook feeds, but that’s for another day.
I’m the repository for many of the heritage photos in my family, since I do both genealogy and scrapbooking. I’ve come across a number of these from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As many of those people had no or very few pictures of them while they were living, it was expected.
The two that were not were ones of two of my brothers who died as infants around half a century ago. It seems that one of my uncles took it upon himself to do this and later presented them to my folks, who promptly put them in a box on a shelf. For my older brother, they are the only pictures that I’ve ever seen of him.
60 years ago in rural Kansas the picture-in-the-casket was still within memory. (From when photos were rare and you didn’t have a recent one?) A woman I knew, whose husband was much older and had heart problems, dragged her husband to a photographer’s - she wanted her last portrait live, thank you!
I took pictures of my mother in her casket. Two of my sisters wanted copies, and the other still can’t fathom why we would want such a thing. For a while, I needed to look at them sometimes so I wouldn’t keep expecting her to come back.
A family friend took pictures at my father’s wife’s funeral. I thought that was rude and strange. I’d have been more understanding had it been my father taking the pictures, or someone else very very close to her, but this person seemed too distantly connected to have earned the right to take those pictures. It just felt wrong.
I don’t think I’d want any photos of my loved ones after they’ve died. Too creepy, for me. But I can understand why some people feel it’s necessary for closure.
…I haven’t encountered enough dead people in my lifetime to even contemplate taking pictures of dead people. And I take photos of people for a living.