Ghost in the Camera
April Richon Jones
Three recent exhibits in New York took as their shared departure point the storied history of "spirit photography" in the U.S. and Europe. "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and "Photographing the Invisible: 19th Century Spirit Images" at the Keith de Lellis Gallery, culled together a remarkable array of photographs from the latter half of the 19th Century, in which ghostly spirits, clad in white sheets, and their formless cousins–auras and apparitions–appear in flashes of light to haunt, spook or simply "loom over" their human counterparts. In a third exhibit, "Apparition," at Lennon, Weinberg Gallery, contemporary photographer Laura Larson employed double-exposure and other unknown methods (she refuses to divulge her secrets) to reexamine the phenomenon of "spirit photography" and the occult. Larson also restages 19th Century séance scenes like the ones at the Met for her series "Ectoplasm."
The Met and the de Lellis provide an unusual glimpse into the world of the occult. The Met provides an historical account of the subject’s development, tracing its origins in different countries and extending into the 20th Century. The De Lellis Gallery focuses on a smaller selection of 19th Century images from a private collection. In both exhibits, bizarrely-dressed figures–some in turbans, veils or sheets and others in Indian headdress or half-nude–loom over their unwitting human counterparts, dissolving into the background by means of double-exposure and other technical tricks.
The first known "spirit photographs" appeared in the U.S. in the 1860s, in the years surrounding the Civil War. They appeared in Europe about ten years later, first in France and then Great Britain. In America, these spirit photographs developed in tandem with the American Spiritualist movement, whose adherents believed that the human spirit lived outside the body itself and that the dead could communicate with the living.
Two divergent camps emerged in the creation of these photographs. On one side, a number of reputable medical doctors, some of them pioneers in the field of psychology, recorded the work of spirit-mediums to better understand the human mind. Conversely, however, were photographers who made theatrically-staged "spoofs," mimicking the mediums and Spiritualism in general. One need only look to the invention of the "ghost-stamp," a metal plate inscribed with a central circle of lead, for evidence of this niche market. The "ghost-stamp" allowed photographers to superimpose a white circle of light onto the center of an otherwise technically accurate photograph, and thereby quickly and efficiently create instant apparitions for a commercial market.
Viewing the photographs at the Met and the de Lellis, one is often unaware of the "seriousness" of each image and the purpose behind their creation. There are the familiar ghosts, clad in the now-ubiquitous white bed sheet. And other images that depict bright flashes of light that obscure otherwise technically brilliant images–frightening apparition or masterful application of the "ghost stamp?" Then there are those images resulting from actual séances (or performances of them), in which participants hover in the air, make tables levitate and even spew ectoplasm from their nose or mouth.
Indeed, "ectoplasm" is perhaps the most interesting phenomenon to be recorded by these spirit photographs. Not the green slime of contemporary imagination, though nearly as gross, ectoplasm was a fibrous, cottony substance said to be the direct embodiment of a medium’s psyche. And though mediums could be either women or men, women were generally more common conduits of ectoplasmic transmission. Photographs in "The Perfect Medium" at the Met depict it emanating from almost every imaginable female orifice.
Most notable in these photographs is the case of "Eva P.," a spirit-medium who performed completely naked, though only in the company of another woman, Juliette Alexandre-Bisson, who once observed ectoplasm emanating from Eva’s vagina. (Allusions to larger themes are obvious here, especially those of creation and birth, the female reproductive cycle and the importance of bodily fluids to religion, science and also photography). The photos of Eva P. at the Met are simultaneously fascinating and repulsive. They depict ectoplasm as it emanates from Eva’s nude body; her bare breasts are draped in the stuff as well.
The spectacle that must have surrounded the creation of these photographs is the most intriguing aspect of their creation. The act of the performance during the séance, the stripping of garments and the fondling of the foul substance (which was later determined to be animal lung tissue in one instance, and cotton soaked in goose fat, in another) are what make these images so compelling. Interesting, too, is the way that the photograph transforms the performance, which is really a theatrical event, into a tangible object. Small and delicate, these images are closer to naughty cartes-de-visites than objective scientific investigation.
Contemporary photographer Laura Larson’s recent work recreates these 19th century spirit photographs. Larson is perhaps best known for her "Complementary" series from 2002, a group of photographs of empty, though recently inhabited, hotel rooms in which the presence of human life is intimated through Larson’s depiction of its absence. Her latest work consists of three series: "Apparition," "Ectoplasm" and "Asylum." In "Apparition," (on display at Lennon, Weinberg), Larson uses technical manipulations to recreate the appearance of spirits or apparitions in wooded settings. In "Asylum," she employs the same tricks only in the cells and hallways of a former insane asylum in Athens, Ohio.
The "Ectoplasm" series is the most visually interesting of the three, and in it Larson restages séance-scenes from the 19th Century, taking on the role of well-known mediums like "Eva. C." In "White on Black," from the "Ectoplasm" series, the bare legs of a seated woman are shown with an oozing tangle of ectoplasm pooled underneath them. In "Eva. C (breast detail)," the naked torso of a woman is embellished with delicate strings of the stuff that is draped across the stomach and breasts. Such images are obvious borrowings from their 19th Century predecessors. "White on Black" imitates a photograph of Kathleen Goligher, now on display at the Met, who was the youngest daughter of a family of mediums and whose table levitations and ectoplasmic effluvia were well-documented. "Eva C. (breast detail)" is a direct take-off of the Met’s image of the same subject.
In her writings, Larson aligns herself with performance artists like Carolee Schneeman and Hannah Wilke, who she describes as "latter-day mediums." But Larson’s photographs are more akin to soft-core pornography than performance art. Glossy and softly-lit, one is struck by the beauty and perversity of each image rather than the performance that was required in its making. One simply doesn’t feel the need or desire to probe the circumstances behind the creation of each piece, and for that reason the 19th Century images are far more successful. Over one hundred years since their initial inception, these images are still able to impart to their viewers a sense of bewilderment and wonder.
