Announcement
Vintage photos, real photo postcards, postmortem photos, tintypes, antique cabinet cards, circus freaks photos, CDVs, historic photos, vernacular photographs with punctum from Phunctum
Punctum “is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me."
―Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
I've gathered these photos - one by one - because something about them draws me in...I hope you'll find something that speaks to you as well. These images may be fun, funky, freaky, haunting, historical, hysterical, beautiful or bizarre. They will always be vintage, original, and scarce or one of a kind.
Follow me on Instagram: @phunctum
Please visit my other shop, veraviola, for unusual, lovely or odd vintage finds:
http://www.veraviola.etsy.com
Items
All Items
Reviews
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Janet on Jan 23, 2023
5 out of 5 starsThis is a beautiful tintype! This lovely lady is stunning and really dressed up! The tintype is so clear! Thank you! I love it! I will cherish it as I have the other antique photos I have gotten from you! It was shipped quickly and safely! Take very good care! Janet P.S. Did you send me an extra CDV of a cute child? My brain is fogged! My cat, Lilibet, has been very ill. She is going to an overnight vet tomorrow. Thank God!
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Janet on Jan 23, 2023
5 out of 5 starsThis is an adorable tintype!!! It is such a wonderful Civil War example! The children are precious! I especially love the child in the middle! She is looking to the side! How cute! I love the girls' cropped haircuts! Trends tend to repeat themselves! I see little girls now with this style. My hair is cut in a similar fashion... sort of a long bob. You know I love your store! Thank you for quick and safe shipping! Take care!!! Janet
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Douglas on Jan 30, 2023
5 out of 5 starsExcellent item 😁Excellent service 😁Highly recommend 😁😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀Excellent item😁Excellent service 😁Highly recommend 😁😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀Thanks again😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀Thanks again Excellent item😁Excellent service 😁Highly recommend 😁😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀Excellent item😁Excellent service 😁Highly recommend....The BEST!!!!!!!
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Janet on Jan 16, 2023
5 out of 5 starsLori, You know I love your store! This is another beautiful tintype of a lady wearing lovely clothing! Her eyes and hair look dark. The tintype is in very good shape as usual! Thank you for shipping it safely and quickly! Take very good care! Janet
About phunctum
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favorite photos & rppcs from my personal collection
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Beautiful verso of cabinet card of J F Standiford, only U.S. Licensed Photographer in the Indian Territory (c.1880)
Purveyor of Peculiar Photography
Photographs reveal the "that-has-been" - an aura of lost time and lost memories.
I fell in love with old photos (and history) thanks to my paternal grandmother and the stacks of crumbling family albums she'd let me pore over whenever I'd visit. In the late 1800s, she had traveled as a child to the Oklahoma panhandle in a covered wagon and then lived in a dirt-floor dugout. She married at age 15 and bore 14 children. She lost two daughters and a tiny granddaughter to "dust pneumonia" in the dust bowl of the 1930s; they died within only a few days of each other. Several of her grown children made the hard trip west to California in the dirty thirties, shades of the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath. A few years later, my grandfather died - leaving my grandmother with several young children still at home.
I knew these and other members of that large family only from the old black and white photos in those albums. I experienced a bit of the dust bowl through these images; the soul-crushing poverty, the love and hope and optimism in desperate times.
Old photographs can communicate history, continuity, family, love, heartbreak, fear, joy, desire... Even photos of complete strangers can sometimes touch something deep inside us. From this passion for images of the past came my shop, phunctum, where I sell unique & unusual old photos that have stories to tell...stories that have been long silenced until now.
Please visit me at my other shop, veraviola, for a large variety of great vintage finds:
www.veraviola.etsy.com
Shop members
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Lori
Purveyor Of Peculiar Photography
Shop policies
Accepted payment methods
Returns & exchanges
Cancellations
Cancellations: not accepted
Please contact the seller if you have any problems with your order.
More information
Frequently asked questions
Re: shipping to Germany
My company, phunctum, is registered at the Packaging Register of the Stiftung Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister (Foundation Central Agency Packaging Register – ZSVR) with registration number DE5394738727331. My Dual System Licensing partner for the collection, sorting & recycling of the packaging is ACTIVATE by RECLAY. As consumer please ensure that all received packaging is disposed of in the right recycling containers, Blue for all paper & cardboard and Yellow for all plastics.
Re: postmortem photography (part 1)
Post mortem images are difficult for most of us to look at, and today are often seen as macabre. This is the reason for the warning photo I often insert as the first image in a listing. However, in the late 19th & early 20th century people were, if not less afraid of death than we are now, then at least more accustomed to it. In Victorian and early Edwardian times the infant mortality rate was high and life expectancy in general was far shorter than it is today. Photographs were expensive, and mostly reserved for special occasions. In many cases, no photograph of a loved one (especially a child) existed before they died, so having a portrait made after death was a way to hold onto a visual remembrance of them.
Re: postmortem photography (part 2)
Even a sad memory was better than no memory at all. By the early 20th century mortality rates began to lessen. Many people could afford their own cameras and were able to photograph family members while alive. Having portraits of the living made post mortem portraits unnecessary, and they became less and less desirable. And as for the collectors of post mortem photography, I like the description Ransom Riggs gives in his magazine, mental_floss: "The taboos of sex and death switched places in the last hundred years. The Victorians would’ve been shocked at the erotic images you find everywhere in the 21st century, but didn’t flinch when it came to making images of their dead loved ones.
Re: postmortem photography (part 3)
I’d like to think that the people who collect those photos are just as interested in this lost way of life — or rather, way of death; a set of rituals that now seem alien to us — as they are in the gruesome ghost babies themselves." (www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/83929) Today most large hospital neo-natal intensive care units will offer to take a picture of parents holding their deceased infant. Some professional photographers even donate their time to the Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Foundation, which helps grieving parents through the loss of their stillborn or infant children by giving the gift of professional portraiture.