The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography
Religion
The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography
Spirit photography; Spiritualism
The recent lecture on “Spirit Photography,” given by Mr. J. Traill
Taylor before a large audience, composed of the members of the London
and Provincial Photographic Association and their friends, is being much
talked about in photographic circles. Mr. Taylor, whose personal _bonâ
fides_ in the matter are admitted to be quite above suspicion, showed
upon an ordinary lantern screen the results which he had obtained.
The conditions under which the spirit experiments were conducted were
as follows:—Mr. Taylor used his own binocular stereoscopic camera,
and provided himself with unopened packages of “Ilford” dry plates,
purchased from dealers of repute. He exposed the plates by means of
magnesium ribbon in the presence of a medium. At the first attempt,
between the camera and the sitter a female figure was developed. On
several of the other plates exposed various figures were also discovered.
It was distinctly asserted by Mr. Taylor that none of these were visible
to him at any time during the exposure in the camera, and he vouched that
no one had the slightest opportunity of tampering with the plates before
they were placed in the dark slide or immediately preceding development.
_From THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK, March 24th, 1893._[10]
THE EXPERIMENTS IN SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY.—We call attention to certain
important points in Mr. Taylor’s paper and the remarks which follow it.
The first consideration is, that nothing should be jumped at as fraud,
though it may appear to be so. Mr. Taylor has taken a strong, manly
position in exhibiting photographs which have all the appearance of being
spurious, and yet he knows they are not so. A man in a position less
eminent could not afford to be so bold. Mr. Glendinning dwells on this
feature of the investigation in an excellent manner.
The photograph obtained without exposure at all, described at the close
of the report, suggests a means of producing pictures quite unknown to
science or photographic art. It, in its way, resembles the direct writing
on closed slates, or on unopened packets of paper. But on carefully
examining Mr. Taylor’s negatives it appears as if the spirit figures had
not been cut out and stuck on, but there is a blending of the one picture
with the other, showing plainly that a different mode of operation was at
work.
We have often observed in our lectures that the nature of the image
differs in the pictures of every spirit photographer. Evidently the
photographers on the other side have taken up Mr. Taylor’s challenge
to investigate in a very serious manner, and have shown some of their
skill to set the brains of mortal photographers on the alert for a more
comprehensive knowledge of the possibilities involved in their art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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