Book Details

Faces of the Living Dead

The Belief in Spirit Photography

Martyn Jolly

Photographic portraits with ghost figures, spirit writing and ectoplasm crowding the living subjects were all part of the spirit photography craze that swept the world from the 1870s to the 1930s.

Opinion

“This is a curious book which documents a curious practice, adn does it with great scholarship, careful documentation as well as with a sybtle dose of wit.” The Canberra Times

About this Title

Photographic portraits with ghost figures, spirit writing and ectoplasm crowding the living subjects were all part of the spirit photography craze that swept the world from the 1870s to the 1930s. Momentous events such as the American Civil War, World War I and the influenza epidemic brought loss of life and grief on a massive scale, and for those who were grieving, spirit photography offered a strong message: the potential to contact lost loved ones.

Spirit photography was firmly rooted in the popularity of Spiritualism and psychic research, and these portraits, which seemed miraculous at the time, appear eerie even to the modern viewer who knows them to be fakes. Celebrity spirit photographers were both revered as miracle workers and reviled as shameless frauds preying on the vulnerable for their own gain. Illusionists, mediums and high-profile personalities such as spiritual evangelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the sceptical Harry Houdini, who was driven to expose fraudulent magicians, made spirit photography a powerful, contentious and sensational phenomenon.

From the collections of The British Library and other major archives in Britain and America, Faces of the Living Dead includes work from leading spirit photographers of the time, including William Crookes, Ada Deane, William Mumler and Edward Wyllie, and examines the evolution and popularity of spirit photography.

Spirit photographs offer us compelling historical evidence of the power of technology to assist people in coping with the inexplicable and undesirable experiences of modernity.

About the Author

Martyn Jolly is Head of Photomedia at The Australian National University School of Art. He has been researching spirit photography for several years as part of a wider interest in the affective power of the photograph. He is also an artist and his work has been exhibited throughout Australia and internationally.

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978-0-522-85288-2