VIEW ALL WALTON'S BLOG ENTRIES
Extraordinary photographs at the Met's new exhibit The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult recall a vastly different world, one of ghosts, extraworldly phenomena, and astounding photographic techniques that still tantalize the imagination even after 100 years. Recall that our previous world--the one before technology seemingly conquered everything except our own mental ghosts--was endowed with spirits, phantasms and vital occult forces, and these were everpresent forces in daily life. Whether Swiss mountain legends found in the Alpensagen or rumors of Tibetan oracles, everyday life in Europe (and the United States) more than a century ago grappled with these phenomena, and the pioneers of photography certainly did their share to capitalize on and reflect these extraworldly forces. The world that led to the Mesmeric mania of 1851; the world of Madame Blavatsky and her followers; the world of seances...none of these simply cropped up overnight. All the more reason why this exhibit is so utterly fascinating. It took until 1913, when Wegener's Der Student von Prag arrived on the big screen to see moving images of a doppelgänger, but decades earlier photographic techniques had already produced such fantasies as the ghost of Abraham Lincoln (learn more about this in the exhibit).
Photo: Eugène Thiébault (French, b. 1825), Henri Robin and a Specter(1863)
Tags:
medium, met, occult, phantasms, photography, spirits
© All rights reserved.
Posted on 9/30/2005
(
Permanent Link
)
Send to Friend
