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Spirit photos amaze New York
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ROY STEMMAN REPORTS FROM NEW YORK:
Who would have thought that the much-maligned subject of psychic photography – now virtually non-existent and regarded even by some Spiritualists as no more than a contemptible fraud – would become the subject of a major exhibition?
But that’s precisely what has happened here in New York, where the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue has put on display a remarkable collection of images, the majority of which are purported to be either of spirits of the dead, mediumistic phenomena or emanations of paranormal power.
“The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult”, which ran from 27 September to 31 December 2005, consisted of 120 exhibits, most of which have been stored away from public view, in private collections or the archives of Spiritualist or parapsychological institutes and universities, for decades.
Some, however, will be familiar to those with a keen interest in the paranormal – but not in the enlarged format that the exhibition organisers have used to such good effect for a few of the photographs. These include medium Ferihummer with ectoplasm draped over his head and an equally remarkable image of Eva C, taken by Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, with a materialised object on her head and a stream of light between her hands.
Those involved in staging the exhibition are to be congratulated. They have tapped into an area of interest that few would have suspected, giving a new lease of life to the sitters and the photographers – most of whom are long since dead – who produced these remarkable results.
Spiritualism’s advocates at the turn of the last century, the organisers point out, “enlisted photography to provide manifest proof of the immaterial: emanations and auras; thoughts, hallucinations, and dreams; or the spirits of the deceased. Closer to the scientific revelations of the X-ray (discovered in 1896) than to the double exposure parlour tricks of 1850s ghost photographs, the more than 120 stunning and surprising works in this exhibition reflect an attempt to reconcile the physical and spiritual worlds.”
 What interested me as a wandered around the exhibition, listening to the comments of the hundreds of visitors gazing at the images with mixed emotions – sometimes amused, at other times frozen in wide-eyed wonder – was the these psychic photographs had a fascination of their own that was somehow divorced from their evidential value.
I was familiar with most of the photographs and knew the stories behind them. In evaluating them I had always needed to know as much about them as possible in order to make my own judgment on whether they were likely to be genuine or otherwise. This, I soon realised, was not important to the vast majority of visitors, who were able to enjoy them as images, in the same way that they would look at paintings or drawings in a gallery without needing to know much about the artist or subject.
It was this quality that the museum and exhibition organisers had appreciated – confirmed from a smaller but equally popular version of the exhibition held in Paris in 2004 – and which the record number of visitors to “The Perfect Medium” had reinforced.
After viewing the exhibition I travelled on to Princeton University, New Jersey, for a symposium, “Dark Rooms: Photography and Invisibility”, organised by the Department of Art and Archaeology and held to coincide with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition. Indeed, the exhibition’s organisers were among the speakers.
Academia, I have to say, made something of a meal of the subject. Among the topics discussed were “Visual Incapacities in the Early 19th Century” and “Blow Up: microphotography and the ‘optical unconscious’”. But there were also excellent contributions from Alexandra Owen (Northwestern University) on “Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of the Cottingley Fairy Photographs” and from Andreas Fischer (Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, Freiburg) on “Photography as a Link between Art, Hypnosis and Mediumship: The Work of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862-1929)”.
But I was pleased to get back to New York and focus my attention again on the exhibition.
Visitors were provided with sufficient captions and large display story boards to give them helpful background and insights into the images displayed. Better still, an impressive hardback illustrated catalogue of the exhibition – also containing images that were not in the show – provides a wealth of additional information. Compiled by Clément Chéroux, Andreas Fischer, Pierre Apraxine, Denis Canguilhem and Sophie Schmit and published by Yale University Press, it is the best analysis of psychic photography I have read, ranging as it does from the earliest photographers, such as William Mumler in the United States and Frederick Hudson in Europe. There are also images of materialisations, including Sir William Crookes’ famous pictures of Katie King.
My only criticism would be that both the exhibition and the catalogue fail to cover 20th century psychic photographers adequately. John Myers, for example – who was well-known and produced numerous paranormal images on both sides of the Atlantic – doesn’t even get a mention in either. Nor is there any reference to the more recent results produced by the Scole group in the UK.
But, I’m pleased to say, images by American psychic Ted Serios, whose unique talent was “thoughtography”, are included and he also gets a very positive evaluation from parapsychologist Stephen E. Braude.
The exhibition was organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, with the assistance of the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, Freiburg im Breisgau, and The Howard Gilman Foundation, New York.
Photo albums and other images have now been packed up and returned to their keepers and it is unlikely that an exhibition of psychic photography on such a scale will be staged again in the foreseeable future – if at all.
An in-depth feature on "Psychic Photography" will be published in the first issue of "Life and Soul" online magazine, to be launched shortly. Click here to find out more.
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Posted on Monday, September 04, 2006
Category: Paranormal
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