Photography And The Occult

The Art of Photography

Ted Forbes

Diy, Art, Arts, Visual Arts, Image, Technology, Photography, Tv & Film, Culture, Tutorials, Gadgets, Photographers

4.5 • 942 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2015

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Considering the release date of this video, I thought I'd cover a topic appropriate for the season - Photography and the Occult. There was an extreme period of occult photography that was produced from the 1870's to about the 1930's. Gimmicks and techniques were used into fooling people that the supernatural was somehow being photographed (quite consistently I might add). This period of history can typically be organized into 3 categories: Photography of Spirits, Photography of Fluids and Photography of Mediums. In this video we will have a look at the occult and how photography played a roll in the theater of the supernatural. SPONSOR: This episode is sponsored by Audiblepodcast - for a free audio book of your choice - visit http://audiblepodcast.com/aop Twitter: http://twitter.com/tedforbes Instagram: http://instagram.com/tedforbes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aop.podcast Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/tedforbes Website: http://theartofphotography.tv And get on our mailing list to stay up to date on photography news and the latest episodes: http://theartofphotography.tv/about/mailing-list/ Ted Forbes The Art of Photography 3100 Main St #135 Dallas, Texas 75226 Thanks for watching - if you like this video, remember to share it with your friends! My name is Ted Forbes and I make videos about photography. I’ve been making photographs most of my life and I have a tremendously deep passion for photography that I want to share with you on YouTube. The Art of Photography is my channel and I produce photography videos to provide a 360 degree look into the world of making images. We all want to get better so lets do this together! I make videos covering famous photographers, photography techniques, composition, the history of photography and much more. I also have a strong community of photographers who watch the show and we frequently do social media challenges for photographers to submit their own work. I feature the best and most interesting on the show when we do these so come check it out and get involved!

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up everybody? Welcome back to the show, new studio. You can see that we are getting moved in,
0:04.6	unboxed and getting settled, and I figured since tomorrow is Halloween, which is immediately followed by Day of the Dead,
0:09.8	that I would pick a topic today that was somewhat seasonally appropriate.
0:13.1	And so today I want to talk about photography and the occult,
0:15.6	which is something I'm not done on the show before,
0:17.4	and it's actually a really interesting thing to look at historically,
0:20.8	because there is a very fruitful period of images that were made
0:24.1	between probably about 1870 to up to 1930 or so and what's interesting is there was a bit of a
0:30.8	rebirth of interest in this type of photography back in the 1970s when
0:35.2	Sam Waggstef, who was a very well-known curator as well as photography collector early on,
0:42.4	had an opportunity to purchase a collection which he did buy
0:45.0	of images which are essentially clients in the 1860s and 1870s
0:50.0	sitting with spirits of their deceased loved ones.
0:53.0	And this is a really whimsically strange part of the history of photography.
0:59.0	And most of these images that he purchased were accredited to William H. Mumler, who was a photographer in the United States who actually had set up a business
1:07.6	photographing post-mortem photography. You could come in for a fee as a client and you could get a photo with your deceased loved one.
1:15.0	And the United States were coming out of the Civil War, which in a lot of ways was an extremely traumatic time for people.
1:21.0	And when you consider that most people had lost family members
1:25.1	and loved ones in this war just the way that people react to preserving memories and
1:30.9	being able to go in and get one last portrait with the spirit of the
1:34.2	deceased before they move on was I think in some ways therapeutic in terms of
1:39.6	maybe a way to let it go and also at the same time a way to preserve their memory.
	...

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