著者

浜野 志保

出版者

英米文化学会

雑誌

英米文化 (ISSN:09173536)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.35, pp.55-73, 2005

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The history of spirit photography began when the movement of Spiritualism saw a shift in its focus from raps to materialization, from sound to vision. There were some noted spirit phographers. The most famous and first successful is William Mumler of Boston. Frederick Hudson, Samuel and Mrs. Guppy are said to have been the pioneers in England. Eugene Buguet took more artistic spirit photographs than those predecessors, some of which summoned celebrities' ghosts. After some years of stagnation, William Hope and his Crewe Circle revived this type of photography, and, beside the spiritualists like Arthur Conan Doyle, experts in conjuring like Harry Price and Harry Houdini got involved in the disputes about their authenticity. It is true that spirit photography was an inevitable by-product of Spiritualism more and more spectacularized in the postbellum period. But, taking a look at the early history of photography, we find two other contexts which gave rise to it. First, there were some attempts to overcome the limitations of photography as a visual medium, and spirit photography was one as it tried to catch the invisible. Second, spirit photography was a new kind of portrait photography that could represent their subjects' individualities, when photographic typology was being established through the spread of commercial photography.