Women, Spirit Photography & Psychical Research: Negotiating Gender Conventions and Loss
Abstract
This dissertation explores how women used practices of spirit photography and psychical research to negotiate social change from the late nineteenth century to today. Developed in the US in the early 1860s, shortly after the Spiritualist movement spread to Canada and the UK, spirit photography emerged when scientific reasoning shook the foundations of orthodox religion and offered an alternative perspective on the afterlife. It was first used by Spiritualists to communicate with the spirit world and as evidence of their beliefs. It was quickly absorbed into mainstream culture through the daily press, becoming an issue for public debate.
This research draws on literature in histories of photography and women’s social histories. It is based on archival research and uses feminist and affect theories to explore the socio-cultural conditions in which spirit photographs were produced and disseminated. I consider women’s positions within the male dominated field of photography during periods of rapid social transformation and instability, as previously accepted ideas about gender, science, and religion were collapsing. Exploring a range of emotions that the photographs elicit, I consider affective engagements between image, creator, and spirit subject. These relations draw viewers into the photographs and the moments they capture, inviting them to engage with the image and their own spirituality. I also consider how spirit photographs were used as objects for consolation during times of loss and grief.
This dissertation examines three Canadian case studies from a feminist, social history perspective to consider how women’s practices simultaneously adhered to and challenged ideas about femininity, and how women negotiated private and public spheres. Through close analyses of Hannah Maynard, Lillian Hamilton, and Sylvia Barber, I argue that these women gained agency and autonomy through various practices of spirit photography. My study concludes with a discussion of spirit photographs and videos by contemporary artists Shannon Taggart and Susan MacWilliam. I highlight continuities between historical and contemporary practices to suggest that the position of artist-as-researcher granted them agency like their historical predecessors.