Photographing Another Time

Tag Area: Time Travel Trope
Short Story

I’m Scared

In the 1950s, a retired man in New York City speculates on a variety of cases of odd temporal occurrences such as the woman who realized that the old dog who persistently followed her in 1947 was actually the puppy she adopted several years later. And then there was the now famous case of Rudolph Fentz who seemingly popped into Times Square on an evening in the 1950s, apparently straight from 1876. —Michael Main
Got himself killed is right. Eleven-fifteen at night in Times Square—the theaters letting out, busiest time and place in the world—and this guy shows up in the middle of the street, gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he'd never seen them before.
A policeman steps toward a wrought-iron fence with abstract, colorful skyscrapers in the background.
  • Fantasy
  • Definite Time Travel
Comic Book

Unusual Tales #20

The Forbidden Camera

Archeologist Wayne Banford ignores the sanskrit warning to leave the camera where he found it in a cave with an idol. —Michael Main
He who would claim this camera as his own will have a life of woe heed this warning.
In the first of three large panels, we see a sweating archeologist frightened over a photo of himself in years to come.
  • Fantasy
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Debatable Time Travel
TV Episode

The Twilight Zone (v1s02e10)

A Most Unusual Camera

Petty thieves Chet and Paula Diedrich are frustrated, angry, and in a bickering mood when they find nothing but cheap junk in the 400-lbs. of stuff they lifted from a curios store in the middle of the night, . . . until that boxy looking camera with the indecipherable label—dix à la propriétaire—produces a photo of the immediate future. —Michael Main
Yeah, it takes dopey pictures—dopey pictures like things that haven’t happened yet, but they do happen.
Jean Carson (as Paula Diedrich) holds up an unusual, boxy camera.
  • Weird Fiction
  • Debatable Time Travel
Novella

from The Teacher of Symmetry Cycle

Преподаватель симметрии

Based on a review at the Modern Novel website, part of this story involves the devil showing photographs of the future to a man named Vanoski (an obscure author from the 1930s). So, we’ve got photos-from-the-future, but no actual time travel. However, there is time travel in another story (“Fotografiya Pushkin (1799–2099)”) from the Teacher of Symmetry Cycle. And just to pile satire on top of satire, the 16 stories in the cycle were purportedly written by an obscure Englishman named A. Tired-Boffin, and Bitov was merely the humble messenger who provided translations of these lost gems into Russian.

Also, according to Fantlab[/b] and Labirint, this is the central story of Bitov’s Teacher of Symmetry Cycle, which consists of 16 of avant-garde stories by an unknown English author, A. Tired-Boffin (1859–1937). Bitov purportedly found and translated some of these stories to Russian.
Итак, на фотографии был бесспорно я, и мое будущее лицо мне нравилось и подходило, но чем же оно тогда было так искажено?
translate So, it was undeniably me in the photograph, and I liked and suited my future face, but why was it so distorted then?
Title page of a Russian story with a sketched, black-and-white portrait of the author, Andrei Bitov, at the top.
  • Fantasy
  • Comedy
  • Time Phenomena
Novella

Goosebumps 4

Say Cheese and Die!

No image currently available.
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • Audience: Children
  • Debatable Time Travel
Feature Film

Time Lapse

Three friends stumble across a camera that produces pictures from 24 hours in the future. That no-good Jasper thinks to use it to make a fortune with his bookie, while painter Finn is happy to see a painting that he’s going to paint, resulting in a nice example of the artist paradox. And Callie has her own agenda going on. From there, the plot turns into a gory thriller where whatever the photos show, the three friends must make happen or they will die as Mr. B. did, all while the bookie’s henchmen threaten them all. —Michael Main
Mr. B. invented a camera that takes pictures of the future.
Danielle Panabaker (as Callie) stares straight-ahead from out of a clockface above a large, mechanical and electronic contraption.
  • Eloi Bronze Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel