1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Printing/taking photos of open caskets

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Hank_Scorpio, Dec 22, 2009.

  1. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    There was controversy in 1978 when the National Enquirer ran a cover shot of Elvis in his coffin. They paid his cousin to secretly take the photo.

    Edit: Oops, Elvis died in 1977, not 1978.
     
  2. golfnut8924

    golfnut8924 Guest

    Personally, I think the really messed up car accident photos that newspapers publish are harder to look at than a cleaned up body in a casket.

    I'd rather not look at either, but by comparison, I can see why the funeral pics would make it in.
     
  3. Den1983

    Den1983 Active Member

    I third this. My sentiments exactly.
     
  4. JackReacher

    JackReacher Well-Known Member

    Went to a friend's funeral a decade ago and his open casket was right inside the church doors. I was not expecting that and it really fucked me up. Haven't been to a funeral since and have vowed not to go to another one. Seeing someone in a casket, for some reason, just freaks me out. I guess I'd rather remember them as alive, not dead. Seeing an open casket makes that very hard to do. At least for me. Maybe I'm just weird. Who knows.

    That said, I accidentally came upon one of the AP pictures of the Henry funeral today. My initial instinct was to look away and click to another site. For some reason, I didn't. I just stared.

    Christ. I have issues.
     
  5. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    Went to an open casket funeral for my great-grandmother last month and it wasn't unsettling.
     
  6. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    It's a way to have closure. You see them there and you understand that they are gone. I will never, ever forget touching my father's hand in his casket a few years ago. That I might not reccommend.
     
  7. Trey Beamon

    Trey Beamon Active Member

    I'm totally with you, Ryan. To me, what's fucked up about an open casket is the immediacy of it all.

    To see someone who was alive/in good health a few days earlier just lying there is hard to process. It's even more difficult when the person didn't suffer and looks exactly how you remember them. You almost want to shake the person and say, "Wake up, man ... let's get out of here."

    Then again, IMO, it's nothing compared to seeing the casket closed and being carted into the funeral mass. That's when it always hit me the hardest.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 1, 2015
  8. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    I attended the funeral of a man who had bone cancer in his face. Open casket, and I was not warned.

    I'm amazed I did not scream.
     
  9. Calvin Hobbes

    Calvin Hobbes Member

    So is anyone here planning to use one of the Henry casket photos in tomorrow's sections?
     
  10. When I was younger, I worked at a funeral home in an area where Eastern European immigrants resided. A lot of them still had ties back home, and it was common to see them taking pictures of the bodies in the caskets to send back home to relatives who could not attend the funerals.
     
  11. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Till's mother wanted the papers to run the open-casket photo because she wanted the world to know how beaten up he was before he was murdered.

    Open-casket photos have been controversial since photography was first invented. When Lincoln was assassinated, his body was taken throughout the northeast prior to his burial in Illinois and his casket was open at funeral parlors for most of the time (until there was too much decomposition) for mourners to pay their respects.

    In New York, a newspaper photographer shot a photo of the two guards at Lincoln's coffin, which was open at the time. There was some controversy over whether the photog meant to take the photo of Lincoln or if he was just trying to get a shot of the guards.

    Either way, the photo ran in the paper, and Sec. of War Edwin Stanton saw it, blew a gasket, and ordered the photo plates seized and destroyed, and the photog arrested if he resisted (he didn't). Most of the plates were destroyed, but a few of them were hidden by the photog and rediscovered in an attic decades later by a relative. They were sent to a museum.
     
  12. StaggerLee

    StaggerLee Well-Known Member

    I used the only one I felt comfortable with, which was a picture of someone wearing Chris Henry's jersey comforting Chad Ochocinco. The casket is visible in the background, but not Henry's body.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page