Spirit Photography
心霊写真 / 1862–1930s / Style / Photographic Genres
The 19th-century craft of double-exposed ghosts, from Mumler's portrait of Lincoln's widow to the séance boom — a style of media deception feeding on faith in photographic evidence itself.
Translucent superimposed figures / Composites with mourning portraits / The séance-record format / Staged evidentiality
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Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Comparing primary sources and canonical works · Extracting principles that transfer to other media
- Type
- Observe the letters, signs and scale of reference works
- Composition
- Extract the one structure that governs gaze and information
- Material
- Verify the materials and behaviors specific to era, region and process
- Caution
- Don't reduce it to surface signs. Verify the context of era, region, technology and makers.
- Further study
- the Mumler trial of 1869 / the Crewe Circle / the history of photographic evidence