The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult [Hardcover]

THE PERFECT MEDIUM: Photography and the Occult is first a catalogue for an exhibition now titillating the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Hopefully this exhibition will travel: if this fine book/catalogue is any indication of the exciting realms the exhibition explores, it should be a popular success.

For those who regularly visit channelers, mediums, spiritualists, or who follow tales and histories of the world of the occult then this volume of history and photographs will not be as shocking as it is for those less willing to suspend logic. The photographs contained in this book trace auras, spirits, and phenomena dating form Victorian times to the 1930s. It would appear that the advent of the camera proved to confirm the dalliances of the mediums who summoned the spirits of the departed for the eager (and willing to pay!) clients. Photographs here show weird auras, shadows of beings, and phenomena not readily seen by the critical eye: are these the tomfoolery of the photographer manipulating photographic plates, staged bizarre frameworks that defy explanation outside the camera lens, or are these truly captured moments? That is for the viewer and the fine writers to dissect.

The latter portion of the book samples photographic portraits of various mediums, at times alone and at times with their assembled clients. One of particular interest is the medium Eugenie Picquart who was said to enter a trance and 'become' the voice and guise of Sarah Bernhardt and Mephistopheles! Spectacular theatrics that glow with both humor and invention - at the expense of the clients! The first spirit photographer, one William Mumler, concocted a photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the spirit of the deceased Abraham at her side. Such was the credibility of public in the PT Barnum age - and beyond.

It is a book that opens the discussion of what is photographic art - representation or manipulation of an image - and if it is both (as we routinely see in galleries today), it is a powerful addition to the history of art making. This is an entertaining, well-presented book of images only imagined by most. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 05

In the ancient days when cameras used film and the photographer had responsibility for advancing or changing the film in the camera before taking the next photo, there was a risk the pictures would be ruined by double exposure. A ghostly image of one figure would be superimposed upon another, to the detriment of the clear representation of both. It was a familiar accident, and few thought it had any particular meaning or importance. But in the nineteenth century, photography was just starting up when spiritualism was starting up, and to some the ghost images looked like, well, ghosts. In _The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult_ (Yale University Press), Clement Chéroux and other contributors have shown how photography documented spooks, auras, life forces, levitations, and more. This is a big book with hundreds of photographs. Looking through the pictures, it is fairly easy to see that not one demonstrates in an incontrovertible way that something supernatural was happening, but the photos are genuinely spooky and strange, and more than a bit silly.

The uncanny floating and transparent images shown in these tintypes, silver prints, and stereo cards are obvious concoctions. Many of the pictures are genuinely grotesque. There was a fashion in the early twentieth century for mediums to produce ectoplasm (you'd think that confronting the spirit world would put you above fashions or fads, but it isn't so). Ectoplasm could be extruded from a medium's mouth, nose, navel, or loins, a damp, cold, amorphous, gauzy stuff that was supposed to be a spirit manifesting in some sort of weird organic and material way. Photography was supposed to record objectively these phenomena and thus verify them, but the ectoplasmic substance that was supposed to be so otherworldly looked in the photos like cloth or paper. One of the less yucky photos in this series shows a standing man who looks as if he is in the process of vomiting a bolt of cloth, which has arrived onto the lap of delighted recipients. Among the prettier pictures in the book are those having to do with fluids. These were vital forces that were supposed to emanate from mediums as they put their fingertips or foreheads onto photographic plates. There was an effort to get scientific legitimacy for such photographs, and the "effluvists" aped the processes and jargon of radiology. They also designated the emanations as N-rays, V-rays, "... and enough others to form their own alphabet." Because of these scientific aspirations, genuine physicists evaluated the phenomenon, only finding such unextraordinary causes as poorly diluted developer or simple registry of body heat.

Though the book purports to be merely a historic documentation of a particular facet of photography without taking sides on veracity of the depicted phenomena, the essays that accompany the pictures cannot help but take the controversy into account. This is in part because the photographs were controversial in their time, and historic accounts of them cannot omit that there were lawsuits against frauds as well as apostate spiritualist photographers who afterwards made their living exposing tricks rather than performing them. The pictures are a documentation of the will to believe. For instance, even Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, a German doctor and photographic researcher of the medium Eva C., confessed of a photo of the medium with ectoplasm all over her head, "A skeptical spectator would think on seeing this photograph that Eva had put a kitchen towel on her head." Actually, it takes very little skepticism to see the picture in that way, but true believers have their own way of seeing things, wonderfully documented in a fine looking book.

Spirit photography holds an important place in the history of photography because it's really the first time that double exposures and mattes were used to manipulate images.

This book, which is the partner to a museum show of the same name, doesn't take a position as to whether any of the pictures are real or hoaxes. It leaves that up to you. The purpose, however, is to give the history of this fascinating area of photography, which it does very well. It is beautifully printed in Italy with a durable hard cover and filled with excellent examples. It also treats the subject in an academic style the I found informative.

If you're like me, you will find it a good addition to you're photography book collection or a fun coffee table attraction. It might even leave you scratching your head, especially in the case of Ted Serios.