Abstracts of Papers
Anthony Enns:
The Return of the Dead: Photography, Memory, Mourning
The invention of photography promised to immortalize the dead, as can be
seen in memorial and spirit photographs, two widespread practices in the
mid- to late-nineteenth century. Tom Gunning argues that the photographing
of ghosts represents photography's uncanny ability to create "a parallel
world of phantasmatic doubles alongside the concrete world of the senses,"
while critics like André Bazin suggest that photography is actually an
extension of earlier practices of mummification and embalming. Roland
Barthes similarly argues that every photograph represents "the return of
the dead," and Corey Creekmur claims that photography's ability to preserve
a tangible connection to the dead might even prolong or inhibit mourning by
providing the constant illusion of presence. This essay will expand on
this work by reexamining the phenomenon of spirit photography and its
relation to memory and mourning. I will argue not only that these
photographs served to prolong mourning by preserving a living connection to
the dead, but also that they represent a crisis in perception that occurred
in the nineteenth century. While the photographic apparatus seemed to
function as a prosthetic technology that simulated the function of the eye,
spirit photography also revealed the potential limitations of the eye and
the degree to which viewing photographs involved a highly creative and
imaginative investment. The scandals and trials that resulted from these
images also illustrate a public debate about the reliability of photographs
and the very nature of vision and memory. Instead of providing viewers
with a tangible link to the past, these photographs were incorporated into
a more complex psychic process of constructing personal connections between
past and present, thus bridging reality and fantasy, the living and the dead.
A version of this paper has been published in:
Picturing America. Trauma, Reality, Politics and Identity in American Visual Culture.
Antje Dallmann, Reinhard Isensee, Philipp Kneis (Editors). Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2007.
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