Chéroux, Clément, et al. The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (exh. cat.). New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2005. Review by STAN PARCHIN
November 9, 2009
|
| Eugène Thiébault (French, born 1825). Henri Robin and a Specter (1863). Albumen silver print. 22.9 x 17.4 cm (9 x 6.9 in.). Collection of Gérard Lévy, Paris. |
|
| Unknown Artist (French School). The Ghost of Bernadette Soubirous (ca. 1890). Albumen silver print. 5.8 x 9.5 cm (2.3 x 3.7 in.). Collection of Keith de Lellis, New York. |
|
| Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (German, 1862-1929). The Medium Eva C. with a Materialization on Her Head and a Luminous Apparition Between Her Hands (1912). Gelatin silver print. 24 x 18 cm (9.4 x 7.1 in.). Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, Freiburg im Breisgau. |
From the mid-19th Century through well after World War II, photography was used to record the real and paranormal worlds. During its infancy, individuals found ways to make cameras produce seemingly supernatural effects. They created ghosts, spectres, apparitions, auras, psychic phenomena and the like in pictures. Addressing this intriguing subject is The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, a cleverly titled catalogue for a remarkable exhibition of the same name at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (September 27–December 31, 2005). Authors Clément Chéroux, Andreas Fischer, Pierre Apraxine, Denis Canguilhem and Sophie Schmit explore the influence of Spiritualism and science on photography from Victorian times to the 1960s. They examine more than 120 haunting works on paper from public and private collections in Europe and North America.
Belief in the spirit's existence beyond the human body and the dead's ability to communicate with the living were two basic tenets of Spiritualism. Its origins traced back to the 1850s, the movement gave rise to spirit photography, pioneered by American William H. Mumler (1832-1884) in 1860s Boston. His techniques spread quickly to London and Paris.
Of course, Spiritualism's devotees attracted those who sought to debunk their beliefs. One such detractor was the French illusionist Henri Robin, who performed in a mid-19th century Parisian theater. The charlatan openly admitted to using two-way mirrors to conjure up spirits magically on the stage during his "phantasmagorical" feats.
In Henri Robin and a Specter (1863), an advertisement for his show, Eugène Thiébault (b. 1825) photographed the illusionist. Robin is frightened from behind by a heinous ghostly apparition, its cold skeletal visage visible. Thiébault achieved his heart-stopping effect of the performer's pernicious pursuit by a dastardly diabolical demon through his intentional use of double exposure. A subtle memento mori in the photograph is the empty hourglass atop Robin's table, suggesting that with the ghost's appearance, the magician's time on Earth has run out.
Despite the protests of the few, popular fascination with Spiritualism and spirit photography continued to soar dramatically after periods of war, especially when people sought desperately to contact their deceased loved ones. This occurred most notably in the United States after the American Civil War (1861-65), Paris after the bloody Commune of 1871 and Great Britain and parts of continental Europe during World War I (1914-18).
Spirit photography's popularity received a serious boost in 1880s France with the development of a new emulsion and the rapidly growing number of amateur photographers. One of the eeriest pictures from this period is The Ghost of Bernadette Soubirous (ca. 1890). Soubirous (1844-1879) was a sickly, French farm girl from rural Lourdes. She experienced 18 visions of the Virgin Mary during her lifetime. By virtue of her simple and holy life, Bernadette was canonized by Pope Pius XI (r. 1922-1939) in 1933. In a haunting print of the saint, the viewer sees a garden outside of a building, perhaps religious in nature. The spectral image of a young woman, draped in a white robe and veil, peacefully proceeds to the left-hand side of the photograph. Repeated five times with each impression becoming fainter, the saint gradually fades into the brick façade ahead, providing a convincing picture of Bernadette's fleeting spirit, an image staged and photographed well after the subject's death.
Spiritualists sought to reconcile the intangible and corporeal worlds through séances. Scientific inquiries into psychic phenomena were all the rage in the early 20th Century. Photography was employed to record manifestations of the spiritual world. An interesting image of The Medium Eva C.... (1912) clearly demonstrates this point. Eva C., a questionable psychic, was investigated by the German psychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862-1929). In the doctor's amusing photograph, a gentleman is transfixed by an ectoplasmic bright light that appears horizontally between the medium's outstretched hands. Here photography played a significant role in capturing a seemingly occult phenomenon for the gullible viewer to behold.
The Perfect Medium..., a well-written 288-page volume, includes examples of fluidic photography, a visual art form cultivated after the discovery of X-rays in 1896. Images of flattened palms radiating light, produced purely by body heat, were interesting to observe but readily dismissed by scientists as accidents of the photographic process.