The old timey photos in this series all have one eerie quality in common-the mother's identity has been concealed. Whether with shroud, or by simply scraping the face away, erasing their identity seems like an odd thing to do when they're posed for a picture with their children.
Maybe they were having a bad hair day, or woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but isn't wearing a shroud over your head at a photo shoot an extreme reaction to not looking your best? If anybody has any insight into this strange trend in portraiture, please share! Otherwise, enjoy taking a look back at when people were really weird about having their picture taken.
Link --via Flavorwire
In some cases, the photograph is only meant to be of the children and so the mother is hidden or her face is not shown. However, in a large number of these cases (especially the ones where the face has been blacked out or scratched through) the women are most likely not the mothers. They are the nannies or governesses of the children, not people the family would necessarily want to appear in their photographs.
Come now, surely it's not THAT easy to scrape a face away.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/misscellania/5320623454/in/photostream
Personally, I think it's a black KKK thing.