Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Haunted Indices: Spirit Photography and the Photographic Index

Introduction
     Death and photography are inextricably linked; they are mutually bound by the medium’s ability to ‘freeze’ a moment in time, liberating the subject from the inevitability of death. From its very origins, photography was blessed with two possibilities: one, the ability to produce an ‘indexical’ image, and two, the ability to visualize the previously invisible. The latter contingency appears alongside the emergence of American Spiritualism–a nineteenth century movement with a cultural stake in the existence of ghosts–where the photographic index swiftly became a mediator to the afterlife, thus giving birth to the genre of the spirit photograph. For the movement’s acolytes, these ‘spirit photographs’ breathed new life into the ontological possibility of a lingering human consciousness after death. In this sense, spirit photography was doubly subversive of ephemerality: not only does the photograph preserve the likeness of a subject; it could also confront the imminence of death by revealing the existence of an etheric afterlife.
     However, there is a profound historical and cultural ambiguity surrounding the existence of ghosts; despite their apparent photographic presence, their existence remains entrenched in uncertainty. This truism has similar consequences for spirit photography, for it interrogates what Tom Gunning calls the photograph’s truth claim–admittedly, an index by another name.[1] [2] In photography, the index responds to the “physical relationship between the object photographed and the image finally created.”[3] In other words, the index ostensibly proves that the photographed event took place at that time in that space. Current theorization of the index situates it in a place of crisis: theorists such as Gunning seem to be recasting it as phenomenology.[4] Spirit photography, too, places the index in a precarious situation that demands a rethinking of the medium’s indexical quality. Despite the recurring accusations of forgery and happenstance, many historical accounts on spirit photography are oblique in their reference to the genre’s authenticity. In light of this, this essay seeks to alleviate these discursive omissions by interrogating spirit photography’s indexicality; in other words, I argue here that manipulation and perception of spirit photography complicate and compromise the photographic index. My reasoning for this is twofold. Firstly, while some spirit photographs continue to elude a rational explanation, many are confirmable results of accidental or conscious tampering with the photographic process (double exposure being a recurring tool). I argue that these situations do not disprove the photograph index, but do compromise its claims to legitimacy. Secondly, the photographic index is brought further into conflict by the subjectivity of perception.[5] Briefly, I argue here that the perception of (and the narrative created around) the spirit photograph’s index complicate–but do not necessarily invalidate–the medium’s indexical quality.
     Structurally, the first section of this essay dialectically situates André Bazin and Roland Barthes–representing photography’s objectivity and its subjectivity respectively–to tease out the distinctions between authenticity and perception. These two theorists in particular are remarkable for their visceral confrontation with the mutual theme of photography and death.[6] [7] For Bazin, photography’s ontological status is predicated on its mechanical reproduction of reality and its ability to create a ‘double’ of the subject.[8] For this reason, Bazin designates the medium as the apex of the mummy complex; with photography, image arts were no longer bound by representation and could effectively ‘embalm’ the subject by preserving his or her likeness.[9] Photography’s ability to reproduce reality in total is an area of dispute in my essay, for I will argue that spirit photography appropriates and re-contextualizes parts of other photographs, an act that lies about what took place before the camera. In addition, Bazin makes an assumption about the limited role the photographer plays in the photographic process.[10] This essay attempts to indicate the ways in which the practice of spirit photography contests the assumption, as the photographer was necessary to consciously or unconsciously alter the image. For Barthes, his invaluable reflections on photography in Camera Lucida situate the viewer in relation to his subjectivity by way of the elements of the photograph’s reception–the studium and the punctum.[11] I employ Barthes here to argue that the viewer’s subjectivity plays a part in the legitimating of a spirit photograph; this subjectivity, in other words, poses a threat to the photograph’s indexical quality. Following this dichotomy, I will chart a brief history of Spiritualism and its relationship to photography. Here I will pay specific attention to Spiritualism’s role in easing the mourning process. I will also spell out the ways in which spirit photography collapses our common understanding of what constitutes a medium: in Spiritualist discourse, a medium is not necessarily only a technology; it can also be a human, thus bringing Bazin’s comments about the photographer into question.[12] In the final section of this paper, I return to questions of the photographic index by using Barthes and Bazin to interrogate the ambiguity that surrounds spirit photography’s ontological and phenomenological nature.
Bazin and Barthes: Photography and Death, Depiction and Perception
     Debates about photography's ontological status recur throughout theory, but in his formative text, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” André Bazin claims that photography’s ontological status is derived from its ability to mechanically reproduce reality.[13] Here, Bazin situates the medium as the telos of the arts: for Bazin, the invention of photography finally achieved the artistic desire of verisimilitude, for he writes, “Photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness.”[14] Not only does photography successfully create a duplicate of its subject, but it also, according to Bazin, removes the artistic bias of the photographer:
For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man. The personality of the photographer enters into the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be photographed and by way of the purpose he has in his mind. Although the final result may reflect something of his personality, this does not play the same role as it is played by that of the painter. All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence.[15]
Photography, then, cannot represent, because the artist plays a limited creative role in the photographic process that cannot totally reflect the photographer’s intentions.[16] According to Bazin, the photographer’s creative license is displaced by the medium’s automatisms that give the photograph “a quality of credibility.”[17] This credibility is a result of the photograph’s adherence to the objects it depicts, creating an ‘index’[18] of a moment that is ‘mummified’ both temporally and spatially.[19]
     I argue here that Bazin’s contentions are misleading. While Bazin may not be incorrect in stating that photography ‘mechanically reproduces reality’, [20] he fails to account properly for photographic manipulations. Although the most manipulated photograph may retain some aspect of the original event, many of these alterations hinder its indexical claim. This is especially so in spirit photography, since the perception of these photographs often gives them a false status of authority. Furthermore, Bazin’s statement about the limitations imposed on the photographer demand more scrutiny.[21] As I will discuss later, in early Spiritualist discourse the pictorial trace of a spirit was premised on the photographer’s role, for many spirit photographers claimed they had been possessed during the photographic process. The same could be said of manipulability; if, in other words, the spirit photograph was ‘faked’ but claimed to be authentic, then the photographer is required to alter the presentation and the subject of the picture, thus giving the original event an entirely new meaning and context.
     In contrast to Bazin’s objectivizing of photography, Barthes’ personal and eulogistic reflections on photography illuminate the medium’s subjective nature.[22] While Barthes does not argue against the photographic index, he does suggest that photography’s appeal is derived from the viewer’s social conditioning; he writes,
A specific photograph, in effect, is never distinguished from its referent (from what it represents) or at least is not immediately or generally distinguished from its referent (as is the case for every other image, encumbered–from the start, and because of its status–by the way in which the object is simulated): it is not impossible to perceive the photographic signifier (certain professionals do so), but it requires a secondary action of knowledge or reflection.[23]
For Barthes, it is not only a question of what the photograph depicts, but also of how the photograph is perceived; for this reason, he introduces two elements of the photograph’s reception: the studium and the punctum.[24] The studium–commonly used in the discursive formations of history and sociology–is derived from institutional knowledge, or what we have been educated to seek out in the photograph.[25] The punctum, however, derives from something the viewer cannot explain; in other words, this punctum–which “disturbs” the studium–is that aspect of the photograph that solicits attention to itself by ‘pricking’ the viewer.[26] For my argument, the punctum surfaces when the viewer of the photograph recognizes certain semiotic cues that suggest the likeness of the ‘ghost’ in the spirit photograph. Therefore, phenomenology is crucial to understanding how spirit photography threatens the medium’s indexical quality.
     Furthermore, Bazin and Barthes are in mutual agreement over their thematic interest in death.[27] Bazin claims that the photograph’s preservation of a subject’s likeness is ostensibly a victory over death.[28] Barthes, however, takes this further: in the context of death, the photograph’s that-has-been places the viewer in a state of melancholy: the person depicted in the photograph is no longer, and further, this event has already passed.[29] Yet despite this sadness fuelled by nostalgia, Barthes’ writing on the death of his mother and her presence in photographs is indescribably related to the mourning process, as Geoff Dyer notes in his foreword to Camera Lucida, “In a way, the death of his mother was fortuitous in that it confirmed something Barthes had suspected: that his fascination with the medium–as he glibly admitted in a radio interview in early 1977–“probably has something to do with death…”[30] In the next section, I will elaborate on the relationship between photography and mourning by discussing the historical and cultural beliefs of American Spiritualism. In this sense, I will be paying special attention to the ways in which the movement used photography as an objective tool to ease the process of mourning.
Mourning the Dead: Spiritualism and Photography
     Spiritualism and communications technology enjoy a nuanced relationship that goes back to its very roots. American Spiritualism emerged in 1848 following the apparent haunting of the Fox family’s upstate New York home.[31] Moreover, Kate and Margaret Fox–the two sisters who initially reported the haunting–claimed they had devised a system of communication with the ghost by means of an alphabetized rapping system (i.e. one rap equalled A, two raps equalled B, and so on).[32] This system of communication, Jeffrey Sconce suggests, clarifies the relationship between Spiritualism and technology, as it mirrors the function and operations of the then-recently invented telegraph.[33] [34] While this relationship is far too nuanced to discuss at length, it is clear from this initial haunting that media technologies and Spiritualism share a special mutualism: similar to how microscopes and telescopes vaulted the Enlightenment into an age of mediated visuality, photography granted Spiritualism the means to visualize and ostensibly confirm the existence of ghosts.
     Elsewhere in his book on haunted technologies, Sconce claims that Spiritualism disturbs the semantic distinction between media and ‘mediums’.[35] Traditionally, the term media refers to communicative technologies; in Spiritualism, a medium can transcend this definition by being corporeal.[36] These (traditionally female) subject-mediums are conductors of the séance, a performance in which the spiritual medium acts as a conduit through which the mortal world can contact the spiritual world.[37] While elsewhere I have argued that this feminized medium has cultural consequences on gender representation,[38] there is another kind of subject-medium that transcends gender conventions: the spiritualist photographer. Curiously, these spiritualist photographers speciously reasoned that they possessed communicative powers that allowed them to contact and visualize the spirits. In this sense, without the appropriate photographer, there is no ghost.
     In particular, a spiritualist photographer named William Mumler gave rise to this cohabitation of photography and Spiritualism. An early celebrated figure in Spiritualist circles, Mumler’s ghostly apparitions were originally the result of happenstance, as Crista Cloutier remarks in her biographical essay of Mumler,
According to Mumler’s autobiography, he was alone in the studio one day, attempting to make a self-portrait, when he saw the shadowy figure of a young girl beside his own likeness in the negative. At the time, Mumler attributed the “spirit” to his own inexperience: he believed he had used a previously exposed plate that had been insufficiently cleaned.[39]
Graced with this mysterious photograph, Mumler quickly began to attract more recognisable high society figures such as Mary Todd Lincoln, whose portrait (figure A) with the faded presence of her late husband standing behind her was widely circulated at the time and continues to be one of the most well-known spirit photographs.[40] Spirit photography, then, became a useful technology of detection; while skeptics remained unconvinced and even mounted legal challenges against Mumler and his contemporaries, spirit photography persisted to thrive in a culture where such pictures were a source of great comfort.[41]
     Indeed, mourning plays a large role in the authenticating of the spirit photograph. As Molly McGarry suggests, spirit photography owes its popularity in the mid-nineteenth century to the profusion of mourners, for it was around this time that many were grieving friends and family they had lost during the American Civil War.[42] In short, spirit photography ‘resurrected’ the dead. Indeed, a spirit photograph was largely granted its authority by its resemblance to the deceased it purports to depict; for instance, in figure B, the presence of the girl’s spirit in the photograph taken by a spiritualist photographer named “Dr. Hooper,” was identified by a father who had lost his daughter thirty years before the picture was taken.[43] [44] In contrast to Barthes, spirit photography did not only show “what is there no longer,” but essentially “that which remains.”[45] Regardless, despite its ambiguous ontological status, spirit photography continued to triumph over the epistemic uncertainties that flared over the existence of ghosts. In the next two sections, I will ground this historical and cultural examination by demonstrating how manipulation and perception complicate the photographic index.


An Index of Ghosts
    As I have suggested above, photography and the occult are mutually bound by the latter’s use of the former to collapse the boundaries between our world and the afterlife. Regardless, such nebulous assertions demand more explication; in this section, I interrogate Spiritualist discourse by accentuating the methods used by spiritualist photographers to create these imagistic phantoms. The historical discourse on spirit photography is suffused with unreliable information, yet it clarifies many of the ways in which Spiritualism–a movement of questionable intellectual merit at best–abuses the photographic index to substantiate its beliefs.
     The practice of spirit photography emerged when photography was still a nascent medium, as the camera was still too cumbersome to be used leisurely. Thus, photography would surely have been an easy apparatus to abuse and falsify, even accidentally, in the mid-nineteenth century, bringing the objectivity of this medium into question. In light of these uncertainties, many in Spiritualist circles claimed they had produced spirit photographs by stripping the photographic process of its most fundamental elements; somehow, the camera, the lens, and light were unnecessary.[46] Despite his blind acceptance of the tenets of Spiritualism, Fred Gettings luminously provides an historical example of how some of these ghost photographs were allegedly obtained, he writes:
[Traill] Taylor was among those early investigators who realized that in some cases the extras obtained on the negatives were not always produced by the action of light, which is the sine qua non of the worldly photography, and he was reduced to admitting at a Spiritualist Conference in London in May 1895 that, so far as he could see, neither camera, nor lens, nor light was required to obtain genuine spirit pictures.[47]
This method is called dorchagraphy.[48] However there are limited readings on this type of ‘photography’ and Gettings’ account of the process does not clarify its usefulness in spirit photography.[49] Such vague explications recur throughout Gettings’ book, although this excerpt does epitomize the ambiguous and unreliable nature of Spiritualism.
     Light aside, Gettings addresses the emphasis Spiritualism places on the photographer’s role in the photographic process, an importance rooted in spiritualist photographer Jean Buguet’s suggestion that the spirits in his photographs had “possessed him” for purposes of communicating with the living via the camera.[50] His apparent psychic powers are revealed in correspondences between “psychic author” Lady Caithness and a purported medium named Stainton Moses; in one letter, which is quoted in Gettings’ book, Lady Caithness writes,
[Buguet] acts throughout spirit guidance, being in partial trance during the exposure of the plate. The length of exposure is regulated by spirit guidance–he does not stop the camera until he is told to do so.[51]
In short, the spirits needed both the medium of photography and the medium-photographer to be seen. In this sense, the photographic process is rooted in spiritual possession, which necessitates the presence of the photographer. These statements reflect Bazin’s postulation that the photographer only has a limited authority over how the image is to be presented (selection of the object and minor formal elements such as angle selection and the positioning of objects in the mise-en-scene).[52] Within the context of its discourse, Spiritualism adds the invocation of the dead to that list. Yet, even with this addition, the photographer is still bound by the technological inherencies of the medium; he or she still merely acts as the impetus towards the mechanical reproduction of ‘reality’.[53] These ideas are plausible if only considered within the context of Spiritualism, in which case these photographs are irrefutable documentations of a spiritual existence. It is clear, however, that this discourse insufficiently provides the basis for authenticating the photograph.
     Rather, photographic manipulations provide a clearer example of how spirit photography compromises the index. Even in its prototypical phase, photographs could easily be manipulated either consciously or accidentally. For this reason, it is unclear why Bazin does not complexify his argument further by accounting for the alien features of the photograph that did not originate from the depicted event.[54] Rather, Bazin argues that formalism in photography can only serve to reinforce the medium’s realism; he writes, “Hence photography ranks high in the order of a surrealist creativity because it produces an image that is a reality of nature, namely, a hallucination that is also a fact.”[55] Broadly, it is indeed true that a ghostly extra created by means of a double exposure is arguably a “hallucination that is also a fact,” for the extra may have originated from another photograph.[56] [57] However, this ‘spirit photograph’ created by double exposure is not indexical to the existence of spirits nor is it indexical to an event in which a spirit was present; the extra has been stripped from its original source, de-contextualized, re-contextualized, and then re-presented as indexical proof of the existence of ghosts. In other words, in this hypothetical spirit photograph, the extra was not there, but it does originate from another photograph in which he was there. Problematically, these photographic melanges are never forcefully discussed in Bazin’s essay. Ultimately, manipulations by means of appropriation and re-contextualization raise questions about the indexicality of photography, especially so when the authentication is rooted in the specious reasoning of occultists and parapsychologists.
     Thus, photography demonstrates the unreliability of mediated vision, which is the focus of Tom Gunning’s essay “To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision.”[58] For instance, in his brief discussion of the spirit photography, Gunning suggests that
Most Spirit Photographs [sic] portray spirits alongside “normal” figures in familiar spaces (posed subjects in a studio or room), but the two sorts of bodies appear oddly superimposed upon each other or illogically juxtaposed. This collision of separate orientations betrays the technical means by which the photographs were produced (superimposing two or more images photographed at separate times) and therefore undermines their claim to be evidence of a spirit world.[59]
In spirit photographs, the ‘ghosts’ are hollowed of their initial signification. In some of these photographs, the spirit extra has been clearly extracted from paintings (figure C). How this obvious breach of medium specificity went unchallenged is unclear, however it is clear that spirit photography misappropriated parts of other photographs and paintings to create evidence of a spiritual world.
     Some of these spirit photographs were accidental. At times, spirit photographs were produced by a malfunctioning apparatus or were caused by the photographer’s incompetence. These incidents were symptomatic of the cumbersomeness of early photography; for instance, Clément Chéroux articulates that
At the time of the daguerreotype or of the collodion, slightly less frequently in the days of the gelatin silver bromide process, photographers who reused poorly cleaned plates did indeed risk seeing what the correspondent of Le Progrès photographique so charmingly called unwanted “ghosts” to appear in these images.[60]
Even with the extra’s presence, these photographs are indexical. That is, ignoring the white spherical formations does not tarnish the photograph’s evidential state. If viewed as anything other than signifiers of fault, these images begin to problematize the photograph’s indexicality. However, in these cases the phenomena of the photograph compromise the index. In other words, if these extras are subjectively given the label of ghosts, then the photograph takes on a different meaning.
     However, some of these photographs are not the result of double exposure or faults in the process, yet they still remained manipulated pictures. In the Cottingly Fairy Photographs (figure D), Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths famously claimed to have seen and played with actual fairies. They subsequently took pictures of themselves playing with the fairies as proof.[61] As Sophie Schmit notes, the photographs were popularized by the Arthur Conan Doyle[62]; yet, despite the sensational coverage the photographs received, the narrative was ultimately a fabrication: the fairies, it turned out, were based off of illustrations found in Princess Mary’s Gift Books (figure E) that were ‘copied, re-arranged, cut-out’, and then “held in place with hat pins.”[63] In short, these photographs lifted uncited imagery from another text, thus weakening its indexical quality. Such instances, I will forcefully argue, are the result of the narrative the photographer creates and are reinforced by its subsequent reception by the viewer. This leads, I argue, to a phenomenological re-tooling of the photographic index. However, before that, this instance must be acknowledged as an area where Bazin exaggerated his argument: it is clear that the photographer’s role is not just to initiate the ‘mechanical reproduction of reality’[64] (in the case of the fairy photographs, the perceived reality is really more of a fantasy), but serves to construct the narrative that encompasses the photograph.
Perceptions of the Index: Photography and Phenomenology
     Generally, all evidence is skewered by perception; as Barthes eloquently puts it, “The photographer bears witness essentially to his own subjectivity.”[65] But the subjectivity of the photographer extends to the subjectivity of the viewer, for the index has something at stake in the perception of the image. In the previous section I argued that the photographic index is complicated by conscious or accidental tampering of the photographic process. For instance, the juxtapositions commonly found in early spirit photography create an index of a plurality of events rather than a singular event; in this sense, the photographic index is compromised and breached by an abundance of alien signifiers. In accidental cases, the perception or subjectivity of the photographer engenders the notion that he or she somehow happened upon a spirit. In this section, I take this phenomenological understanding of spirit photography further by suggesting that perception from the viewer (not necessarily the photographer) complicates the index.
     Paradoxically, the phenomenology of spirit photography–that is, the recognition of the ghost–legitimates and complicates the index. In other words, the phenomenology of spirit photography places the viewer in a subjective position relative to his social conditioning: by recognising the presence of a lost loved one or someone with a universal recognisability (Lincoln, for instance), the spirit photograph is presumably authenticated.[66] However, the unreliability of this subjectivity raises questions about its indexicality. In his pioneering essay on spirit photography “Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations,” Tom Gunning argues that this social conditioning is responsible for legitimating spirit photographs; he writes, “[…] it is the uncanny ability of the photograph to produce a double of its subject that gives its unique ontology as much as its existential link with its original source.”[67] Gunning takes this psychoanalytic “uncanny ability of photography” even further by suggesting that the indexical authority of the spirit photograph relied on the recognisability of the ghost.[68] Viewing a spirit photograph, then, doubly relies on the viewer’s history and subconscious.[69] In this sense, the uncanny ‘ontology’ of the photograph derives its status from experience, and therefore is more closely aligned with phenomenology and perception.[70] This phenomenology underscores Tom Gunning’s postulation that the index is often confused with iconicity (however, this confusion goes past the intellectual thought that Gunning is concerned with and extends into the subjectivity of the viewer, who also might confuse iconicity with indexicality).[71] For example, figure A depicts the living Mary Todd Lincoln and the ostensive presence of her late husband’s ghost. An immediate glance suggests that the photograph is indexical to the lingering presence of Abraham Lincoln’s consciousness, for it is there at that time in that space. How Mumler achieved this photograph is unclear, but Lincoln’s iconography is easily replicated. Moreover, Lincoln’s apparition is obscured, making it difficult to identify whether this is an authentic Lincoln spirit photograph or whether it is just a superimposition or an imposter (or a superimposition from another photograph). In this instance, the photograph’s index is predicated on the ghost’s iconicity; whether or not it is a legitimate spirit photograph remains ambiguous.
     Again, Tom Gunning would propose that such a reading of this photograph collapses the boundaries between what constitutes the index and what constitutes its iconicity.[72] In purely semiotic terms[73], Lincoln’s beard, stature and posture contribute to its iconicity. Its indexical quality, however, is more accurately rooted in the photographic process, according to Gunning.[74] For Gunning, the intertwining of indexicality and iconicity is predicated on “visual accuracy and recognizability [sic].”[75] He continues, “Our evaluation of a photograph as accurate (i.e. visually reflecting its subject) depends not simply on its indexical basis (the chemical process), but on our recognition of it as it looks like its subject.”[76] However, the index and the icon are not diametrically opposed elements, as Gunning infers, as iconic elements of the photograph serve to grant the photograph’s truth claim, where the iconic elements are intrinsic to the photograph’s ‘recognisability’ in figure A.[77] It is for this reason that I turn to Barthes’ punctum, which sheds light on why this phenomenological response to spirit photography–in conjunction with the ‘uncanniness’ described by Gunning[78]–paradoxically gives the photograph its indexical quality while also complicating it.
     The spirit photograph collapses the distinction between Barthes’ receptive elements of the studium and the punctum. Viewing a spirit photograph in a contemporary context is formalized by the studium, as these images have now been subsumed as historical documents that relay information about a specific cultural movement that emerged at the threshold of the medium. Viewing a spirit photograph shortly after its development, however, is derived of the punctum, for a respectable fraction of these photographs were not conceived intentionally. Figure F is a photograph taken in 1891 in the library of Combermere shortly after the death of Lord Combermere. The far left of the picture shows a ghostly extra sitting in the chair. The story behind this ghost was purely accidental; the photographer–Sybell Corbet–had decided to take a picture of “the rather splendid library there.”[79] After developing the picture, she noticed “the head, body, and arms of an old man, seated in the high-backed chair to the left of the room.”[80] This, I argue, constitutes photography’s punctum, for it is a detail of the photograph that solicits the viewer’s attention[81]; furthermore, it is not bound by the strict institutional codifications that are inherent in the photograph’s studium.[82] This photograph was subsequently shown to members of the Combermere family, where a few family members suggested that the materialization looked similar to Lord Combermere (it is this instance where the studium takes effect, as the photograph was being shown to the family under the pretext of Lord Combermere’s death and its potential state as an evidence of his lingering presence).[83] However, as Gettings notes, “not everyone agreed about the appearance, which was in any case difficult to distinguish.”[84] In this instance, however, this interloping ghost complicates the photographic index by means of perception; its fleeting resemblance to the late Lord Combermere gave rise to the thought that this photograph was indexical to his ghost, and further, as an index of the existence of spirits. Phenomenology, then, constructs a narrative around the index, complicating photography’s claims of authenticity (but not necessarily disproving it).[85]
Conclusion
     In his essay, Tom Gunning inquires, “What does a ghost look like?”[86] Speculations about ghosts permeate contemporary culture, even though ghosts have been rationalized as nothing more than mere superstitions. Regardless, their photographic presence poses two unique and conflicting observations: one, the photograph’s ‘indexical’ quality–that being its objective relation to the object it depicts–confers the spirit photograph its authenticity, and two, the ambiguous ontological status of ghosts paradoxically corrupts the photographic index. I have argued herein that the photographic index is compromised by the penetration of these ghosts, which are said to be rooted in the spiritual afterlife, but are more appropriately defined as being ‘extras’ lifted from other photographs that have been re-contextualized as evidence for the existence of life after death.
     This contention moves away from André Bazin’s ontological viewing of photography and is more closely aligned with Barthes’ phenomenological study of photography.[87] While it is important to stress that both Barthes and Bazin argue in favour of photography’s index, their postulations are methodologically dichotomous: in this essay, I challenge Bazin’s understanding of photography’s index (or its ‘authority’) by casting the photographic index in the context of spirit photography as: one, contesting Bazin’s claims of the limited role of the photographer, and two, situating re-contextualized aspects of other photographs as an endangerment to the index.[88] In the former, the photographer manipulates and creates a narrative around the spirit photograph, which, in conjunction with photography’s indexicality, eases its claims to authenticity. In the latter, aspects of other photographs are combined–either consciously or accidentally–which compromises the index by signifying outside of the photograph and into other unrelated texts.
     Furthermore, by invoking Barthes, I have employed a phenomenological reading of spirit photography to establish the ways in which this genre of photography abuses the index and uses ghosts as an artifice to suggest its legitimacy. In this case, the ‘uncanniness’[89] of the spirit in the photograph–which can effectively be either the studium or the punctum, depending on the viewing context–contributes to the legitimating of a spirit photograph. I have argued that these unreliable subjective accounts are insufficient in granting the photograph this legitimacy; however, it is clear these identifications re-shape the index accordingly. This is recurrent throughout historical discourse on Spiritualism, where these identifications were taken as legitimate proof of the photograph’s authenticity. This is in no way an articulation against the photographic index. But in the case of spirit photography, excessive tampering of the photograph before, during, and after the process clearly contributes to misleading and imprecise understandings of a photograph’s indexical quality. Ultimately, photography cannot clearly answer our question of what awaits us after death.

Figure A
Mrs. Lincoln with ghost of Abraham Lincoln, WIlliam Mumler, 1865)

Figure B
Spirit photograph of child, "Dr. Hooper," before 1919 
Figure C
F.M. Parkes and Reeves, 1874

Figure D
Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, 1917
Figure E
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/CottingleyFairies-PrincessMary2_gobeirne.png)

Figure F
Sybell Corbet, Library of Combermere, 1891





[1] Tom Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs,” in Plenary Session II: Digital Aesthetics, 39
[2] Gunning suggests that the truth claim is derived from the index and the visual accuracy of the photograph. While even the most unrecognisable photograph might be unclear or inaccurate, the photograph still remains indexical. However, it is never clear why this term should replace the notion of indexicality, for both terms refer to the photograph’s veracity. Furthermore, as I will argue in this essay, perception plays a significant role in forming the photograph’s index. See Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index?” Or, Faking Photographs,” 41
[3] Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs,” 40
[4] “Here I think we encounter a basic aporia in our understanding of photography, one I believe can only be approached phenomenologically, rather than semiotically. It is only by a phenomenological investigation of our investment in the photographic image (digital or otherwise obtained) that I think we can truly grasp the drive behind digitalization and why photography seems unlikely to disappear and why, even without a formulated truth claim, it offers us something that other forms of visual representation cannot.” See Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs,” 44
[5] For instance, as I will elaborate later in this essay, this phenomenology is rooted in the depicted ghost’s recognisability to a person now deceased.
[6] André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” in Film Quarterly 13 (1960), 9-16
[7] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 1-119
[8] Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 12-13
[9] Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 9
[10] Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 13
[11] Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 26-27
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 12
[15] Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 13; emphasis mine
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Bazin never uses the word ‘index’ to describe the photograph’s objective status, but his understanding no doubt informs contemporary writings on the subject.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 5; emphasis mine
[24] Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 26-27
[25] Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 6, 26
[26] Ibid.
[27] Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs,” 46
[28] Ibid.
[29] Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 76-77
[30] Geoff Dyer, foreword to Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, by Roland Barthes (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), x-xi
[31] Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1-2
[32] Ibid.
[33] Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: From Telegraphy to Television (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2000): 23
[34] Furthermore, Sconce argues that technologies such as telegraphy were veiled in such obscurity that many believed electronic media were capable of communicating with other worlds–not just the world of spirits. For instance, in a later chapter, Sconce discusses the then-held belief that radio technology could communicate with an alien civilization on Mars. Such notions were not even counter-cultural; mainstream scholars like Nikola Tesla were firm in their belief that such technologies could breach the boundaries between worlds and dimensions by communicating with other life forms not of this planet. See Sconce, Haunted Media: From Telegraphy to Television, 96-97
[35] Sconce, Haunted Media: From Telegraphy to Television, 25
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] In “The Medium is Possessed: An Archaeology of Possessed Media in the Context of Spiritualist Discourse,” I argue through Sconce, McGarry and Gunning that Spiritualist discourse has informed contemporary entertainment culture’s technologizing of the female body. In the context of Spiritualism, a successful contacting with ghosts is predicated on the presence of a feminized body that acts as a conduit to communicate with the spirit world. This is consistent with the scientific discourse at the time, which had an almost fetishistic interest in the apparent ‘electrified’ biological make-up of the female body. The emergence of the séance would most prominently feature the so-called ‘electrified’ female mediums and their abilities to contact the spirits in the ether. I discuss this essay here because it highlights how Spiritualism blurs the distinction between media and medium by replacing an actual technology as a medium with that of a human body.
[39] Crista Cloutier, “Mumler’s Ghosts,” in The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, eds. Clément Chéroux et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 20
[40] Cloutier, “Mumler’s Ghosts,” 23
[41] Ibid.
[42] McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth Century America, 22-23
[43] Fred Gettings, Ghosts in Pictures (New York: Harmony Books, 1978), 11
[44] To clarify this example, here is the text that identifies the spirit of the young girl: “One day he (the patient) had been out for a walk, and when came back, he said: “Doctor, I feel so queer, I feel as if there is something with me; will you get your camera and take a snapshot of me?” I got the camera and before I exposed the plate I told him I saw a beautiful child with him. I put a dark tablecloth over the door in the drawing room to form a background and then exposed the plate. The gentleman himself took the plate to the dark room and developed it; and there appeared the beautiful spirit form of a little girl with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a role of paper in the other. The exclamation of the gentleman was, “Good heavens! It’s my daughter, who died thirty years ago.” See Gettings, Ghosts in Photographs, Ibid.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Gettings, Ghosts in Photographs, 7-9
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid.
[49] Gettings provides the explanation for this method, which is as follows: “[Andrew Glendinning] would take a few plates from a newly opened box of quarter plates, and then place one of these, still in its paper wrapper, into Duguid’s hands, and then fold the medium’s hands firmly in his own. Duguid described the sensation as being rather like that of holding the handle of a magnetic battery while a slight current was being passed through it. When this “electrical” experience stopped, the plate was developed.” See Gettings, Ghosts in Photographs, 9
[50] Gettings, Ghosts in Photographs, 38
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 16
[56] Ibid.
[57] To elaborate, surrealistic photography often demonstrated a more formal use of photography rather than just merely creating a trace or record of an event. These manipulations, however, are apparently still rooted in realism, according to Bazin.
[58] Tom Gunning, “To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision,” Grey Room 26 (2007), 99
[59] Ibid.
[60] Clément Chéroux, “Ghosts Dialectics: Spirit Photography in Entertainment and Belief,” in The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, eds. Clément Chéroux et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 45
[61] Gettings, Ghosts in Photographs, 67
[62] Doyle was an avid Spiritualist and paranormal researcher. See Sophie Schmit, “Conan Doyle: A Study in Black and White,” in The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult , eds. Clément Chéroux et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 92-94
[63] Schmit, “Conan Doyle: A Study in Black and White,” 93
[64] Ibid.
[65] Roland Barthes, The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962-1980 (USA: Northwestern University Press, 1981), 356
[66] Ibid.
[67] Tom Gunning, “Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theater, Trick Films, and Photography’s Uncanny,” in Fugitive Images from Photography to Video, ed. Patrice Petro (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 995), 43
[68] Ibid.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs,” 41
[72] Ibid.
[73] It is prudent for me to note that theorists such as Barthes and Gunning contend that photography does not possess a language (at least not in the same sense as cinema, which is usually thought in terms of being constructed by sequence- i.e. Eisenstein’s dialectic montage, for instance) and that it “possesses an ontology rather than a semiotics.” However, I use semiotic terms to describe these instances since spirit photography is predicated on recognisability and thus depends on semiotic cues to the ghost’s likeness. See Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index? Or, Faking Photographs,” 46
[74] Ibid.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Ibid; emphasis mine
[77] Ibid.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Gettings, Ghosts in Pictures, 51
[80] Ibid.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Gettings, Ghosts in Pictures, 51-53
[85] There is also evidence to suggest that the phenomenology of figure F goes beyond the punctum and is more logical when thought of in the context of mourning, for this photograph was taken only shortly after the death of Lord Combermere.
[86] Gunning, “To Scan a Ghost: The Ontology of Mediated Vision,” 102
[87] Ibid.
[88] Ibid.
[89] Ibid.