Do you have family photos on display in your home?

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And if you do, is it because YOU want them there, or because other people who live there want them, or because your parents had them, or other people have them, and you just thought you were supposed to?

I was just watching a movie, and consciously noticed that there were several "family photos" on display on the family room set, and it just jumped into my mind that they very often show family photos in TV and movies in the family rooms, living rooms, and even bedrooms… I don't want to say always, but boy it's pretty close. In most people's homes in the real world, they have those photos on display too.

Like many of you, I have poor facial recognition. What I just consciously realized for the first time today is that I don't have the same… PASSION for looking at the faces of my loved ones that so many "normal" people seem to have. Even more than that, I resisted having a photo of my grandmother put in my bedroom years ago as a young person, and a photo of my mother-in-law, a very sweet woman who I loved very much, put on the wall of my family room. Since most of what's unusual about me turns out to be an autistic thing, I thought I'd ask.

Take a moment and think about it seriously. Do you have an actual, active desire to have family photos, or I guess photos of friends if you're not close with your family, around you when you're home? How's your facial recognition?

The only family photos I have on display are framed photos that people have given me as gifts, because I feel it would be rude to the person who gave them to me not to display them.

My parents have always had school photographs on display when we were kids, and now they have a few photographs of family on display. I like having photos of loved ones on display. I live with my boyfriend now and we have photos of us, and his kids, and his ex-wife's dog on display.

I am an Aspie and I am also face blind. I have many family photographs hanging on the wall and some free standing. Most of these my wife (an NT) puts up. I don't mind them and actually enjoy them. I think it is a common custom among NTs to have photographs on display.

On the other hand one of my special interest is early photographs. And I have several displayed on my walls of people I do not know and who are not relatives. Some date back to the 1850's. Others are on my wall because of the photographic types: salt prints, albumens, platinum prints, etc. My wife seems to find that strange. I even have an original photograph of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad on display.

I have prosopagnosia (face blindness) and it's so bad that I have trouble even with regocnizing my own parents and sisters if I run in to them unexpectedly.

I live alone and have one photo of my sister on display. That's all. I don't have any real reason to have it there, but I have no reason to not have it there, either. I think it might be about copying my grandma on some level; she had a whole bookshelf dedicated to family photos (her husband, children, grand children, great grand children and of course spouses and pets of these people.) I always loved to look at that shelf despite not recognizing most of the people, though it might have had something to do with my love for collections.

I never bonded with my family, but I do think of them from time to time. To decorate one corner of the house I bought with an inheritance, I have an oil portrait of my mother as a single woman that she commissioned from a friend, along with a recent snapshot of her on her last fun flight. There are also smaller framed pics of my sister and her husband, myself as a boy, and my best, most recent girlfriend.

My wife has photos exhibited of her relatives...and she makes sure there are photos of mine, too.

I’ve never made an effort to exhibit photos of anybody anywhere.

I have photos of my family--wife and kids. I also have serious problems with face recognition. I don't see these things as related.

I can recognize faces, I like pictures, but I dislike DOING things (that aren't an Interest), so I have two photos at home on the dresser (4x6 my daughter - as baby; 4x6 two cats - now deceased). Oh, and there are a bunch of photos in the entrance ON THE WALL ---- so either my mom did it, or my husband or I had a period of Focus ---- I don't even remember (most are my niece and nephew and a previous foster child - before our kids). At work I have two photos on my desk (4x6 my daughter - as toddler; 4x6 my son - as toddler --- years ago.

What's odd is that I take lots of pictures and spend $$ on studio photos. They are all on my hard drive, or prints in boxes. I would like them displayed, but... but...

Oh, just remember one on the nightstand (8x10 husband and I before marriage with my childhood cat - deceased) and in entrance (4x6 husband and I 1st year of marriage all fancy dressed up).

I have one family picture showing my Great grandmother , my grandmother , my mother , my adopted uncle , my brother , sister and me . My grandmother was the only person who treated me with any dignity whatsoever , the rest gave me the ' ret*d ' treatment , openly mocking , invalidating and ridiculing me . Needless to say , I have no other pictures of any family members , just artwork , which I care deeply about . I avoid people in general and family members like the plague .

My aspie mom left tens of thousands of photos, mostly slides. Father never seems to be featured by himself, and there are very few pictures of family. There are about as many of her military reunions, but the vast majority are just landscapes, with some odd buildings and a few animals. No flowers or insects, but some ice.
When that portrait of her that I display was on her wall, none of the 13 other pictures in the array were of people.

It's an interesting question because I've never felt the urge to display this sort of thing. Like Dear-one, I never really bonded with my family. I also tend to avoid photo opportunities.