Tuesday, August 10

The Bizarre 1914 Photo Coincidence

Photo double exposure coincidenceA classic story from the past today.

Photography was a whole different art back in the early 1900s. In some cases pictures were taken on individual photographic plates and these were developed by specialist shops and stores.

In 1914, just prior to the first world war, a German mother took a photo she had taken of her young son, to a shop in Strasbourg, to be developed. Before she could collect the photo war broke out and for some reason she was unable to return to Strasbourg.

Moving forward two years to 1916, the same woman had another child and purchased a photographic plate to take a picture of her newest arrival. She was now in Frankfurt and after taking the photo presented the plate to be developed.

When she went to collect her picture she was annoyed at first as this showed a double exposure i.e. one picture on top of another. She couldn't work out how this could have possibly happened. She was definite that she had only taken only one photo.

Then she looked more closely at the photo and was stunned to see that the new picture of her daughter was in fact superimposed on that of her son - the photo she took two years previously.

By some bizarre coincidence the film plate had somehow been transferred from Strasbourg to Frankfurt and was marked in error as being unused. This was subsequently sold to the woman so she could take a photo of her daughter.

The photo of her son - which she thought she had lost forever - was found, but perhaps not in exactly the format she would have preferred.

Further Reading:
Photo Taken Of Father Showed His Missing Daughter
Married Couple In Same Photo As Children

Bookmark and Share

2 comments:

  1. you seem to always have a new post when i switch on in my dinner hour ive noticed they are all timed at 12 noon just right 4 my 12-1 lunch. yet another interesting story.

    ReplyDelete