Saturday 10 June 2017

Don't have nightmares


Look what I just found in the Saturday Antiques Market...


... now look a little closer...

All I know is that it is a genuine, untouched portrait photo from France, over 100 years old.

17 comments:

  1. She looks like she's straight out of The Exorcist.

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  2. Is that one of those weirdo pictures they used to make of dead children? I read about that somewhere, how photography was so rare and expensive that almost no one had pictures of themselves, so when a child died they would prop them up as if alive and take one to remember them by. I've seen some creepy examples, and that's what this looks like.

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    1. Strange you should say that. It was offered for sale along with a much earlier, 19th century glass negative of a dead baby, wrapped in swaddling and placed on a bed. I did not want to buy that one - too private and too grief-laden.

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  3. I am supposing it is of a doll, but not the sort which any sane person who loved his daughter would want to give to her.

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  4. A doll for sticking pins into for certain ceremonies ?

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  5. Oh, I'm afraid it really is one of those dead-baby-pictures, and if it is, I feel awfully sorry for the parents.Before the camera, rich people would have their dead children added in the family portrait, looking pale or with eyes closed. Also creepy, actually.
    If it's a doll, I can't even imagine what could force a person even to make such a horrible toy, you are very right there!!! What do you plan to do with it. Tom?

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    1. If it is a dead child, then it is the most bizarre I have seen. I have seen others where they have propped up the child to stand at the end of a pose with its living brothers and sisters, but with eyes closed. I cannot imagine the photographer leaving the eyes so wide open as this without covering them.

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    2. It's the eyes......no it can't be a child, but a doll????? Herons version is a doll for sticking pins in, like some kind of vodoo? No, please, if this is Victorian horror, it's easy to combine it with other specimens of the era. The film Nosferatu came into mind. If you collect enough of that stuff you could create a horror cabinet!! Or not.....

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  6. I've seen a few of those Victorian post-mortem photographs and your one looks like a doll to me.
    Did you get my email about the phone .... I wasn't sure if it sent ?!!!!! XXXX

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    1. Oh sorry Jack@ I thought I had replied. Yes, I am trying to sort it on Monday and as far as I know there will be no problems. I will keep in touch.

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