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The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult Hardcover – Illustrated, October 1, 2005

by Clément Chéroux (Author), Pierre Apraxine (Author), Andreas Fischer (Author),

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The mesmerizing photographic history of occult phenomena, from levitations and apparitions to spectres, ghosts, and auras.

In the early days of photography, many believed and hoped that the camera would prove more efficient than the human eye in capturing the unseen. Spiritualists and animists of the nineteenth century seized on the new technology as a method of substantiating the existence of supernatural beings and happenings. This fascinating book assembles more than 250 photographic images from the Victorian era to the 1960s, each purporting to document an occult phenomenon: levitations, apparitions, transfigurations, ectoplasms, spectres, ghosts, and auras. Drawn from the archives of European and American occult societies and private and public collections, the photographs in many cases have never before been published.

The Perfect Medium studies these rare and remarkable photographs through cultural, historical, and artistic lenses. More than mere curiosities, the images on film are important records of the cultural forces and technical methods that brought about their production. They document in unexpected ways a period when developing photographic technology merged with a popular obsession with the occult to create a new genre of haunting experimental photographs.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Given its subject matter, it's no surprise that this massive volume is more than a little spooky—and this despite its eschewing cheap sensationalism in favor of a sober, art historical tack. Focusing primarily on images from the late Victorian era through the 1930s, the authors tackle three major categories in exploring the long relationship between the photograph and occult phenomena. The first, "Photographs of Spirits," explores the appearance of otherworldly beings and objects in photographic images. The second section, "Photographs of Fluids," reveals how the discovery of the effects of radiation on the photographic plate coincided with an explosion in the photography of radiances, auras and other "effluvia." Rife as they are with obvious trickery and manipulation of the film itself, these two sections offer a fascinating perspective on the photographic medium's early formal and technological development, but the final section, "Photographs of Mediums," provides genuine visceral impact and aesthetic depth. Depicting mediums and onlookers in the midst of séances, these images capture the essentially human face of occult occurrences, be they actual or fraudulent. Levitation, the appearance of the "ectoplasmic veil" and other "materializations" pale beside the awe and ecstasy pictured in these photos' earthly subjects. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

CLÉMENT CHÉROUX is a historian of photography and assistant editor-in-chief of the review Études photographiques. ANDREAS FISCHER is the Curator of Photographs at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Freiburg, Germany. PIERRE APRAXINE is director of the Howard Gilman Foundation in New York. DENIS CANGUILHEM is an art dealer living in Paris. SOPHIE SCHMIT is a film editor and screenwriter.

Product details

Item Weight : 4.28 pounds
Hardcover : 287 pages
ISBN-10 : 0300111363
ISBN-13 : 978-0300111361
Product Dimensions : 11.58 x 9.24 x 1.19 inches
Publisher : Yale University Press; Illustrated Edition (October 1, 2005)
Language: : English

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Robert Mro

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2007

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Spirit photography holds an important place in the history of photography because it's really the first time that double exposures and mattes were used to manipulate images.

This book, which is the partner to a museum show of the same name, doesn't take a position as to whether any of the pictures are real or hoaxes. It leaves that up to you. The purpose, however, is to give the history of this fascinating area of photography, which it does very well. It is beautifully printed in Italy with a durable hard cover and filled with excellent examples. It also treats the subject in an academic style the I found informative.

If you're like me, you will find it a good addition to you're photography book collection or a fun coffee table attraction. It might even leave you scratching your head, especially in the case of Ted Serios.

5 people found this helpful

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M. Hori

An Indicator of a far Less Sophisticated Time (from Ahadada Books)

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2008

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I've been using this book along with Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters in my classes at Waseda University, and one immediately notices the disparity between verbal descriptions of the evidence that convinced the Victorian savants that certain mediums and types of phenomena were "genuine" and the photographic evidence that helped to convince them as lavishly reproduced in this volume. Indeed, we must hold in abeyance our own sophisticated knowledge of special effects in this age of paint shop and Star Wars to keep from laughing out loud at the crude hoaxes that went far to convince such obviously intelligent people as the scientist William Crookes and the naturalist Alfred Wallace to accept the existence of the supernatural based on this kind of material. Then, of course, there are the clearer, more obviously "staged," self-defined hoaxes as well, created to educate and amuse the dupes and the skeptics, respectively, and some great examples are included in this section of the book. If these things, along with the assorted, regurgitated bolts of cloth or glowing strings of muslin drawn from the nasal cavity and draped over the forehead or plucked from the groin or anus of a medium and held fluttering at the end of a wire in the claustrophobic darkness of the seance room were actually considered "proof" then we must suspect that just about every account of things seen and experienced that have come down to us in "scientific" investigative narratives of the 19th and early 20th centuries to be tainted with this same sort of innocence. This would include such remarkable cases as D.D. Home and even Mrs. Piper and her cross-correspondences. Of course, I'm not suggesting that any of these well-meaning investigators willfully tried to misrepresent what they saw, but I suspect that genuine inexperience both with observing and keeping tabs on their subjects, as well as an undeveloped understanding of abnormal psychology, as well--dare I say it?--the will to believe,--skewed their observations. The creation of a self-consistent narrative covered these observational defects, and imposed a patina of believability on the phenomena described. The infamous Cottingly fairies are included as an index as to just how far the will to believe could push the gullibility of intelligent people, along with such near pornographic seance room shots as the extruding of a sheep's lung (think "spirit hand")from the navel--or perhaps lower--of the attractive Margery the medium, her delta of venus barely covered with a gentleman's handkerchief. Having said this, however, one series of photographs from the 1940's taken in England that includes a levitating table and a near chaotic snap of one of the circle apparently being roughly thrown or catpulted into the air over the heads of the others, gives one pause. The essays in this book are scholarly, well-documented, and good to great. Highly recommended even if a little pricey.

7 people found this helpful

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Stuart Schneider

Spirit photography

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2008

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I am still trying to get through this book after several months. It has loads of information - some great, some mundane - but it is not a quick read. I just finished writing a book called Ghosts In The Cemetery and tried using this as a research book. It really was not very helpful for my purposes. I would have liked to see the exhibit that the book covers. It would not have been quite as dense.

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caligirl77

great book

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2010

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I actually got this book for my sister as a birthday gift and she loved it. very interesting and great pics.

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Jennifer Grey

A fascinating subject in an imperfect medium

Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2017

Produced in conjunction with the 2005 exhibition of the same name at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Perfect Medium makes one thing perfectly clear from the start: the editors take absolutely no position as to the veracity of the phenomena depicted in the photos herein. None. Nada. Nope, be the spirits ever-so-obviously double exposures, be the ectoplasm expelled by the medium ever-so-obviously cheesecloth, be the science supporting the images be ever-so-obviously-pseudo, the editors here want you to know - really, really want you to know - that they've got no opinions as to whether or not any of this stuff is real. Looking over the descriptions of the organizations from whose archives (the Society for Psychical Research, the College of Psychic Studies) these photographs were drawn, one can't help but suspect that carefully cultured neutrality has more to do with necessary curatorial discretion than open-mindedness.

Unfortunately, the side-effect of this lack of position is to suck the life out of most of the thirteen contextual essays scattered throughout the book's three sections, which feature photography of spirits, photography of fluids (which has nothing to do with fluid and everything to do with thoughts influencing film), and photography of mediums manifesting things that most definitely are not regurgitated bits of cheesecloth. Really. They're not. The necessity of carefully walking the line between belief and nonbelief - spoiler alert, I'm a fan of the latter - means that the various authors spend more time justifying than contextualizing, which is a pity. I'm far more interested in what drove people's need to see such phenomena, and their perception of photography as a "science" that could help them capture them, than I am in why a 19th century scientist believed something I could have faked in a darkroom after half a semester of Photography 101 was legit, and there's little to none of that here.

The book itself is gorgeous, the quality of the image reproductions impeccable, and the stories in it - no matter how drily told - are full of fascinating figures such as Civil War spirit photographer William Howard Mumler and the cheeky (and surprisingly hot) French faker Edouard Isidore Buguet. Houdini and Doyle even make cameos here. There's no arguing it's educational, and that the images are occasionally moving (or inadvertently funny) because of what they say about human nature, but the text at least is a ghost of what it could have been had the editors come down on one side or the other, or even decided to offer essays that alternated in their points of view. Despite its many high points, that lack leaves this Medium distinctly imperfect.

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Johnny Ray

Excellent and intelligent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2014

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Brilliant reproductions and extremely erudite discussions. A must read for anyone working on mediumship (or indeed stepping into the strange world of mediumship)

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Amicale

Impeccable, mais je suis francophone...

Reviewed in France on August 11, 2018

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Et germaniste, ça n'arrange rien.
Bon, je peux lire l'anglais.
Mais pourquoi les éditions des musées de France ne republient-ils pas ce bijou ?
Les exemplaires français vendus en ligne sont, de fait, hors de prix.

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