The Invisible Mother, 1800s

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

‘This was a practice where the mother, often disguised or hiding, often under a spread, holds her baby tightly for the photographer to insure a sharply focused image.’

The Invisible Mother, 1800s Retronaut | Retronaut - See the past like you wouldn't believe.

 

[Smoke]

Cool but kind of creepy...

 

[Marilynne]

Some of them are way creepy!!

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

If you think about the long shutter speed they had to use in those days this was a pretty good way to keep the kids still. Today with photoshop we could probably use that same method for screaming kids. Just PS out the mother later.

 

[stmv]

some of those photos were kinda scary!

 

[WayneF]

What would be so wrong about a picture of mother with baby?

 

[Eye-level]

They used to have to use these crazy bracing contraptions for adults in the very beginning because of the shutter speeds...they looked like some kind of medieval torture device. Margaret Cameron is a famous one who used them...

 

[§am]

I don't know about scary, but some of them did make me chuckle!