Anton Bruehl
Christine Davis
Stan Douglas
Walker Evans
Geoffrey Farmer
CAO FEI
Greg Girard
Mike Grill
shari hatt
Fred Herzog
J Kuhn
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Tim Lee
JUDY LINN
Kyla Mallett
LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY
Dick Oulton
Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii
Danny Singer
John Vanderpant
Johannes Wohnseifer
ANONYMOUS
ANONYMOUS (SPIRIT)

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ANONYMOUS
Spirit Photographs

1920s gelatin silver contact prints
Image dimension 7 x 9 cm

ESTIMATE $1,000

Spirit photographs are extremely rare and this is the last one from Presentation House Gallery’s holdings. Made between 1928 and 1934 by Winnipeg physician Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton, this photograph captures what an observer at a séance might actually have seen. The medium Mary Ann Marshall is pictured in an intense moment of concentration, in ‘contact’ with the dead. Typical of spirit photographs, “vital forces” emanate from the medium in the form of so-called ectoplasm or teleplasm, a mucous-like, clouded substance believed to be a visible materialization of the spirit world. Dr. Hamilton conducted extensive research into psychic phenomena over the course of 16 years, and was convinced that he had found scientific proof that the human spirit survives beyond the grave.

Spirit photography has only recently been seriously recognized as a significant genre in the history of photography. In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York produced a major scholarly exhibition and publication on spirit photography called The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult.  The earliest attempts to capture paranormal, ghostly activity on film date from the 1860s. As the Spiritualist movement gained momentum in the late 19th century, spirit photography became a hotly debated topic, attracting the attention of major intellectual figures. Photographs served as evidence supporting the claims of occult and paranormal phenomena. Typically, intense interest in spirit photography has followed periods of strife and war when grieving families attempted any means to contact their loved ones. Spirit photographs articulate photography as an ongoing means of accessing the invisible and revealing truths beyond the power of the naked eye.