Spiriting in and Spiriting out Verschijningen en Verdwijningen

Spirit photographs, purporting to depict ghosts, ectoplasmic
emanations, and the like are usually regarded as fakes, the
result of deliberate double exposures, stagings or montages.
Many of them were in fact acknowledged as hoaxes and fakes, yet
during the late 19th century and early 20th century several
reputable scientists and investigators were convinced that some
some spirit photographs, at least, were genuine. Despite the
fact that spirit photographs were extremely widespread during
this period, they have been consigned to the oblivion of
photographic history, along with the whole baggage of
spiritualism. On the other hand, the ""spiriting out'' of people
from important historical photographs has recently received a
great deal of attention as political histories come to be
re-written. The question of authenticity traverses both types of
photography, but within different ideological formulations. The
author tries to examine these ideologies in terms of their
practices, rather than address the issue of authenticity itself.
Topics dealt with include 'fairy photographs' (c.1919), 'spirit
photographs' (c.1920), the 'Optogram' (c.1870) and the
""Spiriting Out'' of such policical figures as Kamenev (c. 1920,
USSR), Peng Chen (c. 1958, China), and other examples taken from
Alain Jauberts book ""Le Commissariat aux Archives'' (1986).
(DutchEnglish)


Citaten:
Jaubert, A.: Le Commissariat aux archives (1986)