Photography as a will to believe and will to truth: Spirit Photography (original) (raw)

Spiritualism, The beginnings. What was the great fuss about? By

So what is spiritualism and spirit photography?, 2021

According to a definition adopted by the National Spiritualist Association of America, spiritualism "is the science, philosophy and religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, using mediumship, with those who live in the spirit world." [1] So what is spiritualism and spirit photography? The basis of many ancient religions is the idea that disembodied spirits of the dead are able and willing to communicate with the living under certain conditions. Its theme re-occurs in myths, fables, legends and anecdotes from all cultures at all periods in man's history. But it is also fair to say that modern spiritualism, as a social phenomenon, had its origins in a small house in Hydesville, New York, on Friday night 31 March 1848.

Photography as a Form of Technological Mediumship in the 19th Century Spiritualism

Viraverita, 2022

The nineteenth century has been a process for spiritualists who used their physiological bodies to communicate with spirits. Spiritualists have combined photography with physiology and used technology as "mediums" to prove the visibility of spirits. Nevertheless, the nineteenth century has been also the exploitability of productions as much as their benefits. Spiritualists and spirit photographers have been denounced as impostors. However, spirit photography has endeavored to prove that a reality existed beyond the visible, and the visibility of spirits endorsed the spiritual narratives by invigorating the ties between mediumship and photography. This article will document the arguments of the spiritualists, defenders and debunkers of the nineteenth century and portray their contribution to mediumship.

Modern-day Religious and Spiritualism

International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

Religious art or sacred art is artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Sacred art involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the path of the spiritual realization within the artist's religious tradition. A religious image, sometimes called a votive image, is a work of visual art that is representational and has a religious purpose, subject, or connection. All major historical religions have made some use of religious images, although their use is strictly controlled and often controversial in many religions. Hajra Ahmed’s as a young artist of the present era engendering a unorthodox contribution towards contemporary art of Pakistan and out of the mundane she has done tremendous religious art with aura of religious places of Pakistan. She has captured the passing moment and grasped the essence of the moment transpiring on the religious spot just like a ceremony of a mem...

Shamans and Spirits: Photography and the Irrational in the Age of Reason

2007

An examination of the issues around portraits of indigenous Shamans created by frontier photographers at the turn of the 19th Century. The essay looks at the relationship between science, imagination and the occult, making comparisons with Spirit Photography from the same period. It looks at how photography as an object of objectivity helped to shape ideas around non-Western cultures as racially and culturally inferior and the response to this in Europe with Spiritualist photography's attempts to legitimize their occult practices through the 'scientific aura' of photography.

Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine

George H. Doran Company, 1919

' a little eamest attention to the matter was bound to admit that, making every allowance for fraud, there was xx INTRODUCTION response introduced the idea of intelligence into what had previously been a mere chaos of noises and movements. The American mind is open to new impressions, and probably the cult spread more rapidly there than it could have done elsewhere. But the biggest brain which tumed itself upon this new subject and drew others behind it, was not American but French. Allan Kardec, with his spiritualist philosophy, differed in some details from the Americans, but founded his conclusions upon the same phenomena. When the whole story comes to be told, however, there is no doubt that it is to England that the new branch of science owes most, and, indeed, that it is due to England that it can be called a science at all. Cambridge University will always be the Mecca of systematic psychic investigation, which is the avenue that nearly always leads eventually to complete acceptance of the spiritual hypothesis. There have seldom, if ever, been a more brilliant set of minds than those which engaged themselves upon this subject.

Spirits, Apparitions, and Traditions of Supernatural Photography

Wojcik, Daniel. "Spirits, Apparitions, and Traditions of Supernatural Photography." Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation 25, no. 1-2 (March-June 2009): 109-136. , 2009

For nearly 150 years, the photographic process has been attributed with the apparitional ability to reveal discarnate beings and miraculous phenomena. In the nineteenth century, members of the Spiritualist movement embraced photography as a technological medium that provided evidence of the afterlife and contact with departed loved ones. Today, traditions of supernatural photography continue to thrive, particularly among the Catholic faithful at Marian apparition sites who regularly use cameras to document miraculous phenomena. This article examines the meaning and appeal of beliefs about photography as a revelatory technology, the popular desire for visible proofs of invisible realms, and the ways that the photographic process allows believers to ritually engage the otherworldly, the sacred, and issues of ultimate concern.

A Historical Approach to the 19th Century Spiritist Phenomenon

(Abstract) This paper analyses spiritism as a social movement, discussing its main implications for 19th century society and culture. A number of social, political and anthropological arguments are presented in order to establish the factors that contributed to the massive spread of the spiritist phenomenon in Europe and America. In the United States, England and France spiritism was in 19th century a movement of great relevance in terms of religious authority. Many scholars who study spiritism as a social movement describe its roots in the " crisis of faith " triggered by developments in science and medicine in this period. Some of the works of the most important historians addressing the spiritist phenomenon and its historical and social meaning in the 19th century are discussed, comparing and contrasting their insights into the movement's causes and consequences.

Science as an Assimilation of the 19th Century Spiritualism into Society

Kültür araştırmaları dergisi, 2021

Spiritualists in the 19 th century have endeavored to prove their assessments by using science itself which tried to debunk their field's phenomena. The most principal claims of spiritualism have been the possibility of communicating with spirits through the agency of mediums and visioning a close person who has been in the moment of dying or far away. Scientific studies have not only been used to prove these assessments but to create new concepts and perceptions about psychic experiences. The aim of this article is to determine that spiritualists have assimilated themselves into society by using science apart from being denounced as superstitious. Hereby, what spiritualists have suggested in terms of science will be documented within a historical process and the terms which they have coined will be examined. It will be clarified that the people who have evaluated these phenomena consisted of scientists, scholars and literary figures. SPR (The Society for Psychical Research), which was completely formed by scientists and scholars, investigated the mediums and put them under multiple psychical experiments. These researches were published in their anthology named as Phantasms of The Living and their periodicals named as "The Proceedings". The terms which were coined in order to scientificate spiritualism have been "psychic force", "telepathy", "hallucination" and "ectoplasm". It will be concluded that these terms have enabled to categorize the assessments of spiritualism which were communicating and visioning spirits, and also accommodated the psychic researchers and mediums to express themselves subjectively by assimilation into society.