A spirit photograph of Harry Price taken by George Moss who subsequently confessed to creating fake pictures (such as this one), c.1925. Senate House Library, University of London/ Mary Evans.
The Photographers’ Gallery in London is displaying items from one of the capital’s more unusual archives for an exhibition of all that is otherworldy on film (or digital, for that matter).
The Harry Price Library of Magical Literature was compiled from the research of Britain’s most notorious ghost hunter, and his photographs of infamous mediums such as ectoplasm-spewing Helen Duncan are shown alongside work by seven contemporary artists in Seeing is Believing, running at the gallery until January 28 2008.
Photograph of blindfolded Helen Duncan during a seance with ectoplasm from nose leading to coathanger spirit at her side, 1933. Senate House Library, University of London
Harry Price (1881-1948) founded the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, whose archive is now held at Senate House Library, University of London, and contains some vintage gems relating to such famous paranormal activity as the Borley Rectory haunting (dubbed the most haunted house in England) and the light emitting psychic Pasquale Erto, known as the human rainbow.
Photographs in the archive have had an obvious influence on the contemporary works on show, whose makers all share a fascination with the supernatural, and work with the properties of photography that lend themselves to suggesting extraordinary phenomena.
If only we still saw photographs in the same way as our early 20th century counterparts, they would be frightening rather than arty.
Florencia Durante, Lone Chair, 2005. Courtesy the Photographers' Gallery
Young women gain glowing auras in Clare Strand’s black and white portraits (created using the same methods as turn of the century spirit photographers); Tim Maul takes shots of empty New York streets where spirits are said to have been detected.
Susan MacWilliam explores ideas of the unseen and Ben Judd engages with the concept of fraud and delusion in his stereoscopic images. Roger Ballen creates disturbing and surreal tableaux with scrawled walls and Florencia Durante plays with the energy of colourful light. Fred Ressler's photographs capture ghost-like faces and figures emerging from shadows.
