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Printing/taking photos of open caskets

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

  1. SixToe

    SixToe Well-Known Member

    If the service was closed to the public, no.

    If it was open to the public then I might argue for a photographer to have access.
     
  2. WolvEagle

    WolvEagle Well-Known Member

    When my wife died last year, no photos were taken, and I'm glad. It was hard enough seeing her dead in her hospital bed, eyes open with all the machinery that had been keeping her alive gone. I got my kids out of school to say their goodbyes at the hospital. It was just as hard to see her in the casket in the nice outfit that my daughter and I picked out from her wardrobe.

    Even though I was in a fog for those few days, I still remember those images clear as day, and I'm sure our teenage children do, too. It's enough of a reminder knowing that her urn is in a nook in our living room, per the children's wishes, and there are some photos of her on the other shelves, including the last one taken of her.

    I really didn't want to have a photo of her after she died. It was spooky enough years ago when I saw the open-casket photo of my grandfather, who died when my dad was 6 or 7.
     
  3. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    Sorry about your wife. You sound like a great caring person.
    The bottom line with all this is the person is no longer there anymore. Whether we touch their hands or not, and are creeped out by that, they are far away. Those of you who have touched the hands of the loved one in the casket at least realize that they are no longer here in any capacity.
    Hopefully their soul is living on somewhere. If not, what was this life for? If there is no life after death they should have told us earlier because it probably would affect the way most people would live. I still believe no respectable publication runs a photo of the body in the casket.
     
  4. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    I agree unconditionally with this statement. I don't have a lot of strongly held beliefs, but this is one of them.
    I agree un
     
  5. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    I don't see a problem if the casket is open, and the family agrees to photos. It's different if there was no photography allowed, or someone jacked open the casket to take a look. For a lot of people, an open casket is a matter of course and no big deal.

    That's the case with my wife's family. The first time I had to kneel down in front of an open casket, it was admittedly a mite strange. I felt like I should talk to the person. It seemed strange that everyone was chatting and having coffee cake seemingly oblivious to the presence of a corpse in the room. But soon enough, I was chatting and having coffee cake along with them.

    My family tends to do cremation. The ashes of my father, a lifelong serial coffee drinker, are, appropriately enough, in a Chock Full O' Nuts can.
     
  6. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    Many respectable publications have run casket shots. The shots run by AP were tasteful.
     
  7. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    Tasteful?
    If you are in favor of casket shots, yes they were tasteful. How could they not be tasteful? It's a person in a coffin. I guess a tasteless shot would be somebody playing with the body or something.
    It's just wrong to run a photo of a dead person in a coffin in a respectable publication in my opinion.
    I guess the picture of his daughter by the casket will win some kind of award even though anybody with a cellphone camera could have gotten the same shot.
     
  8. StaggerLee

    StaggerLee Well-Known Member

    For what it's worth, our sister paper ran on one of their inside pages the shot of Henry's daughter showing him the note she wrote for him.

    And the day it ran, they got quite a few phone calls saying it was in poor taste to run a picture of the body. In fact, they're still receiving calls about the picture, not a lot, but a couple per day.
     
  9. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    You can be such a jackass at times. Funeral shots are nothing new. Have been done for dignitaries as well as gang leaders. There is a way for it to be done with taste and dignity. No one is talking about propping up the body posing for photos.
     
  10. albert77

    albert77 Well-Known Member

    That's what made this one useable IMO. If it had just been the open casket, I would have been against running it. But the girl with the letter gave it some real emotion that made it a heart-tugger. In fact, our desk guy asked me whether we should run it, and I didn't hesitate to say yes. And as far as I know we didn't get any negative reactions from readers.
     
  11. BillyT

    BillyT Active Member

    The Black press did.

    And of course Jet magazine did.
     
  12. Drip

    Drip Active Member

    But the white press had no problem running photos of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in an open casket in 1968.
     
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