One of my favorite ridiculous phenomena of the Victorian Era: the spirit photograph. You could pay money to be photographed and have the supernatural forces around you revealed on a silver plate, be it ectoplasm or be it a mournful feminine face lost a diaphanous swath of otherworldly chiffon.
To the contemporary eye, they’re hilariously, magnificently fake; half-baked tricks of photographic exposure. To me, they’re the perfect combination of anthropology and art, like old sci-fi movies set in a now outdated future. They’re trying to envision something separate from their time and place – death, the year 1995 – but, hampered by their own chintziness, never achieve the escape velocity that real works of speculation or awe do. We are looking at the lowest common denominator for how Victorian-era people (those who could afford a photograph, anyway) conceived of the afterlife.
Their origins are very cynical, these photos, but their falseness has now become quaint and pathetic. Most of these photographers knew that they were scamming customers, but I wonder how many of them were lulled into thought that they were doing a pretty good job at interpreting an actual spirit world. Just helping it along, as it were.
For, example, of this photograph, the National Media Museum makes this note:
“The image of a young man’s face appears prominently over the man, draped in a cloak. The signature at the base of the image belongs to the sitter. The man had links with the person who compiled the spirit album, and he gave the photograph to her as a keepsake. He apparently recognized the young man’s face.”
Did any of these photographers avoid either the pure cynicism of a scammer or the self-delusion of being the spirit world’s darkroom assistant, and instead settle on the middle notion that they were simply giving people comfort?
“A photograph of a mourning scene, probably taken by William Hope (1863-1933) in about 1920. A woman mourns for her husband in a Chapel of Rest, standing by his body which is wrapped in sheets and laden with flowers. The woman’s son stands beside her. The image of a man’s face has been superimposed over the original photograph. The spirit album notes that the family were Roman Catholics and believed in life after death.”
It does make me think about where we we might ourselves, here in this smug moment of the present, be sitting (unbeknown to us) on a little velvet chair, waiting for the nice man to take the exposure and show us another world – above, below, ahead. And about how the effects of sorrow are the same in any time and any place.
Holy mackerel am I ever tired, down to the tips of my fingers. If this week’s page weren’t one of the “round white object near the center of the page” motif transition pages (…you noticed that, right? Yes, you did, there’s a good reader) and if I hadn’t already drawn and scanned it before I became my dad’s home nurse for two weeks, the update would look like this:
[inserted obscurely dispirited post to Twitter here.]
Which, incidentally, will be what next week’s update looks like, because there is no chance, in hell or elsewhere, that I will have the equipment or opportunity to put a page together. But this is what family is for, and helping my dad heal up after his knee surgery is not going to be something I regret anytime soon. Be kind to your kneecaps, gang, because getting that joint replaced is definitely not any kind of fun.
See y’all soon! Wish me luck caring for my favorite gimp.
Well! Welcome to 2010, everybody. It makes me a leeeetle bit ill to think that this will be year 4 of Family Man and me only at page 166, but then, this comic was designed to be a learning experience and an ongoing project rather than an efficient StoryBlast. I’m an immensely better artist and stronger storyteller than I was circa 2006 thanks to the weekly grindstone this comic offers (and the feedback you provide). Thanks for your continued interest, those of you who follow along at home.
I’ll be hauling up to Seattle to take care of my pops, who got his whole dang knee replaced this week; I look forward to many amusing conversations involving the influence of painkillers and many exotic therapy routines performed with rainbow-hued rubber bands. Next week’s page is a simple one, so I’ll be updating while away, although the page for the 20th might come in late.
If you have any store orders, get ’em in within the next 12 hours, or else it’ll just wait for me to get back.
Cheers, all! Happy New Year.
Once more the bright blade of a morning breeze
glides almost too easily through me,
and from the scuffle I’ve been sutured to
some flap of me is freed: I am severed
like a simile: an honest tenor
trembling toward the vehicle I mean
to be: a blackbird licking half notes
from the muscled, sap-damp branches
of the sugar maple tree . . . though I am still
a part of any part of every particle
of me, though I’ll be softly reconstructed
by the white gloves of metonymy,
I grieve: there is no feeling in a cut
that doesn’t heal a bit too much.
– Malachi Black
photo by dannyeastwood
There’s nothing like a week in which you find yourself running searches on “European conifer species” and “historical menarche” for the same project. Nothing like it at all.
Next page: will be in the glorious new year of 2010! Shiny.
I’ll see if I don’t have a good summary to what turned out to be a rather tumultuous year for yours truly (professionally speaking; personally it’s been rather kind).
But really, I’m more excited about everything I’d like to attempt in the new year. That’s the way it should be! Stay tuned for new and exciting nonsense.