Spirit Photography through the years

 

[Unidentified elderly woman seated, three "spirits" in the background] by William Mumler

    I have always been a little bit fascinated by popular conventions and trends in photography and art when studying their history, so I was really excited to explore that in during out last class. When looking back throughout the last 150 years, we can see that we are still taking the same kinds of photographs as we always have. One classic example of a timeless subject is a large group family photo, with the older generations in the middle with the kids posed around them. But another cool example of a photo-specific convention that has stood the test of time is the concept of being able to pose for a photo with a deceased loved one. 

    This photo of an elderly woman with what appear to be three ghosts was taken by a man named William Mumler in Boston, sometime between 1862 and 1875. He took many photographs like this one during that time, passing off the double-exposures as divine "spirit photographs." Unfortunately, he was using a really interesting, innovative, and valuable artistic technique to profit off the séance craze post-civil war (Dave Roos). But you can see the effect he was able to achieve, and I think it was probably just ahead of it's time as far as being able to be appreciated as an artistic rendering of someone's spirit versus a literal depiction of it.

    So obviously Mumler himself as the photographer was in it to make a buck, but we also spoke about the Yoruba tribe in Africa, and their desire to create photographs of their surviving children with their deceased children. In this culture, it was popular to dress the surviving twin up as their dead sibling to pose for a photo that would then be combined with one of them as themselves. While different from Mumler's double-exposed albumen print, the convention of the illusion remains.

Photograph by Sidney Conley

    And even today, using modern post-production photography tools like photoshop, it's common to see older depictions of deceased relatives superimposed at varying opacities onto modern family photographs, like in the photograph by Sidney Conley above. In contrast to Mumler, Conley is not attempting to trick anyone with his version of modern spirit photography. Rather, he's combined an existing photo of the man on the right with the photograph he took, in memoriam of the family that once was, or could have been. Humans have been finding ways to honor those who lived and died before them since the dawn of time, so it's no surprise that it's also found it's way into every corner of the art world. I think we've always used art as a way to visualize the overlap of our realm with the spirit realm, and being able to imagine it through photography is alluring because of how real it looks and feels.

Works Cited

Conley, Sidney. Photograph. Photography by Sidney Conley. Mississippi. Accessed October 10, 2021. https://www.sidneyconley.com/memorial-gallery?pgid=jnnbflbd-49c73559-69dd-465e-b8d2-e5dff3746fe2.

Mumler, William H. [Unidentified Elderly Woman Seated, Three "Spirits" in the Background]. Photograph. The J Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles, CA, 1862. The J Paul Getty Museum. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/95756/william-h-mumler-unidentified-elderly-woman-seated-three-spirits-in-the-background-american-1862-1875/.

Roos, Dave. “When a 19th-Century 'Spirit Photographer' Claimed to Capture Ghosts through His Lens.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, October 17, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/spirit-photography-civil-war-william-mumler.