The Perfect Medium
Photography and the Occult
Spirit photographs, ectoplasm and fairies: the long history of the camera as a device for seeing the invisible.
A catalogue of spirit photography from the 1860s onward: ectoplasm, the dead appearing behind the living, fairies at the bottom of a garden. Assembled by Clément Chéroux and colleagues for exhibitions in Paris, New York and Houston, it treats the pictures as evidence about belief rather than about ghosts, and about what a photograph was once taken to prove.
Recommended by 1 Person
Errol Morris
In The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, photos of ghostly apparitions seem to float in the background of posed portraits. A fairy flies before the eyes of an Edwardian adolescent. It’s a reminder that photography was used for theatrical purposes from its earliest history.
Interview · September 2011
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