The Medium(s) of Photography

Went to the Met yesterday for their new exhibit "The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult."

I've had a deep, abiding interest in all things "spiritual" from a young age. Whether its the Occult, world-religion, mythology, or my own Judeo-Christianity, I've always been fascinated by the mechanics of belief, and by the power of it; both negative and positive. Despite this, I've never seen any of the photographs taken during Spiritualism's heyday.

What struck me most about the photos was the realization that we have changed so very little, despite our technological advances. Our collective desire to believe in Greater Powers is a constant of the human condition. How else do you explain the willingness to view obvious trickery as evidence of spiritual forces?

Three of the first spiritualism celebrities were the Fox girls, three young women from New York. They claimed to be able to communicate with the ghost of a murdered peddler through a self-invented Morse code of raps and taps. When Margaret Fox eventually confessed to having faked the entire thing, the President of the First Spiritual Society of New York refused to believe her confession.

The idea of claiming that unseen "rappings" can be produced with joints of the feet! If she says this, even with regard to her own manifestations, she lies! I and many other men of truth and position have witnessed the manifestations of herself and her sisters many times under circumstances in which it was absolutely impossible for there to have been the least fraud.

(quote courtesy of Arthur Conan Doyle, Spiritualism, and Fairies)

That's some serious denial. It shows the president to be one of two things; a man so devoted to the idea of communication with the dead that he will dismiss any claim to the contrary, or a fellow charlatan afraid of losing the shield of validity.

The exhibit at the Met is full of photos that require a person to adopt this attitude. Many of the photos are such obvious fakes that one should rightfully question the overall sanity of the person who defends them.

And yet.

Maybe you've heard of Ted Serios? Maybe, but probably not. Ted Serios was a self-proclaimed psychic with the supposed ability to "project" his thoughts onto polaroid film. Despite Serios' documented history of alcoholism and mental fragility, various photographs he produced have never been adequately debunked. James Randi, a stage magician and professional skeptic, managed to artificially recreate Serios' ability but despite this, Serios' "power" has never been explained away. The conditions under which he created his photos have continued to indicate the possibility that he actually did possess the talent to create photos with thought.

Some of the photos Serios created are on display as well, and their inclusion provides the question mark at the end of the exhibit. Yes, 99% of the photos are obviously bogus. But that 1% of still-unexplained phenomena sustains the keen, doubleedged sword of belief. People want to believe in powers greater than themselves, and in the mystery of the world around us. All too often, we are willing to suspend disbelief past the breaking point in order to sustain those longings. The pictures on display in The Perfect Medium are a mirror in which we can see the most hopeful, naive portions of ourselves. But in the photos of Ted Serios, the pictures become a window into a larger, unknown world. It's a window we all seek, to one extent or another. We seek it in the practice of religion and in the calling of psychic hotlines. We seek it with such ferocity of purpose that the fakery of photos ceases to matter in the blinding ache of our need.