1332
outlines of a human face (the murderer’s imprint) could
be made out.
So exaggerated then was the effi cacy of the all-seeing
mechanical eye and so readily was its recorded image
acceptable that those present had no diffi culty in seeing
the details of the face of the murderer. They saw what
they wanted to see: long nose, prominent cheekbones,
black moustache and other sinister distinguishing features.
(Nickell, 146)The revolution of photography democratised vision
in the same way that the printing press revolutionised
the dissemination of learning and knowledge. Although
photography did in itself create a window on a smaller
shrunken world, its effect was one of enlarging the
life experience of the huge mass of avid viewers. And
still the perception remained that the camera could not
lie—its basis was in optics and chemistry.
It may seem slightly ironic then that the camera and
the process of photography—very much a result of a
time of innovation and upheaval—should become the
tool for those whom wished to prove the existence of
an incorporeal afterlife. Yet the belief in the camera’s
veracity as objective machine of record would ultimately
lend credence to the claims of proof when photographic
evidence was produced of supernormal phenomena.
When we view a photograph from the early period
of portraiture there is an inherently poignant quality
about these images. These are the shades of the dead,
their actual refl ection in silver, recorded as the light was
refl ected from the skin in darkening silver. Perhaps the
irony of these early images of the then living is that
they serve to confi rm mortality rather than ensuring
immortality.
For the Victorians it surely was secure the shadow
ere the shadow fade. In industrial centres there were
swiftly changing demographics and high mortality rates.
The child mortality rate in cities, stable in the smaller
decentralised centres, rose alarmingly. Death became a
more pronounced cultural aspect of society.
This nineteenth century involvement with mortality,
its possible antecedent the afterlife, and new questions
of belief, resulted in an intricate relationship with pho-
tography, where families celebrated death in albums
that included photographs of clocks recording the
time of death as well as the post-mortem photographs
themselves.
So where rationalism and Darwinian theory chal-
lenged belief, the photograph provided at least one place
of seeming permanence and an afterlife. Where belief
was accentuated the rise of new spiritual movements
and spirit photography provided another.
Communication with the dead was not a new phe-
nomenon that arose in the medium’s parlour of the
nineteenth century. However this occult practice gained
new momentum through the growing desire for assur-
ance that there was indeed an afterlife.
Spiritualism itself began as a movement in the United
States in 1848 with the séance activity of Margaretta
and Katie Fox, sisters from a family in the village of
Hydesville, Wayne County, New York. Not only could
these sisters apparently communicate through rapping’s
with the spirit world but also the ability could be passed
on. The experiments spread widely from the eastern
seaboard of the United States to Britain.
This movement drew its strength in effect from the
reactionary beliefs of the 18th century where fi gures
such as the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg
had begun his counter revolution of belief in a time of
scientifi c rationalism and religious latitudinarianism.
Although Swedenborg was infl uential he had a limited
following in the United States. It was another movement,
Mesmerism, which, having been far more popular in
this country, provided the major basis from which Spiri-
tualism had its origins. Mesmerism was primarily the
creation of Franz Anton Mesmer, a German healer who
used therapeutic hypnotism and the laying on of hands
as part of his healing processes. It was the visions of the
so-called spirit world that many of Mesmer’s patients
or somnambules experienced which generated a wide-
spread fascination with Mesmerism. Spiritualism grew
from the seeds of such occult attempts at re-enchanting
spiritual activity. Within twelve years of the advent of
Spiritualism the fi rst photograph claimed to depict a
spirit was produced in New Jersey (Guiley, p. 568).
It was the New Jersey commercial photographer W.
Campbell who produced the fi rst recorded case of a
spirit photograph apparently without his intervention
in 1860. He showed his remarkable photograph to
the American Photographic Society at their twentieth
annual meeting. The image was a test photograph of
a chair in which the trace picture of a small boy had
mysteriously appeared. Campbell was at a loss to ex-
plain the appearance and was never able to reproduce
such images again (Permutt,12). This would suggest
that the appearance of the boy was not a staged effect.
Curiously the rational answer should have been apparent
to any practising photographer of the time. This was the
period of the wet plate process where glass plates were
coated with a photographic emulsion and exposed in the
camera whilst still wet. As glass was not inexpensive
plates were often cleaned and reused. The result might
be the residue of a non-actinic (i.e. yellowish) image
that though faint would produce a ghostly image if the
plate were re-exposed. But according to Campbell the
boy was unknown to him (Nickell, 148).
Far more famous a personality as spirit photographer
was the Boston photographer William H. Mumler.
Mumler was an engraver by training who worked for
the jewellers Bigelow Brothers and Kennard. He appar-