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Faking It Symposium: Of Spooks, Proofs, and Truths

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Faking It Symposium: Of Spooks, Proofs, and Truths

Program information

The symposium "Truth, Lies, and Photographs" was presented in conjunction with the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop, on view October 11, 2012, through January 27, 2013. In this talk, Louis Kaplan, Chair, Department of Visual Studies, and Professor of History and Theory of Photography and New Media at the University of Toronto, outlines the Mumler Spirit Photograph Case. William H. Mumler, a spirit photographer, claimed that he could photograph subjects with the spirits of their deceased relatives and friends. Mumler was eventually tried for fraud, resulting in a heavily debated trial. One of his more notable subjects included Mary Todd Lincoln, who was photographed with the spirit of her deceased husband, Abraham Lincoln.

Part Five of Seven

Recorded November 2, 2012

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This program is made possible by Joyce Frank Menschel.

James Nares: <em>Street</em>

James Nares: Street
(00:02:17) 18499 views

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Capuchin Friars, Valetta, Malta

Calvert Richard Jones  (Welsh, 1802–1877)

Date:
1846
Medium:
Paper negative with applied media
Dimensions:
Image: 8.3 x 10.2 cm (3 1/4 x 4 in.) Frame: 35.6 x 43.2 cm (14 x 17 in.) (Framed together with FI.26.1)
Classification:
Negatives
Credit Line:
National Media Museum, Bradford, United Kingdom

This artwork is part of Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

This artwork is not on display

  • Description

    In 1846 Jones, who learned the new art of photography directly from its English inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot, set off on a lengthy photographic tour of the Mediterranean. He stopped for four months on the island of Malta, where he recorded views of ships and harbors, picturesque street scenes, and portraits of exotically costumed locals, including this group of bearded and robed Capuchin friars. The print shows four friars on a sunny rooftop. In the negative, however, the silhouette of a fifth man lurks just behind the others. All that was required to make him disappear was a touch of India ink on the negative. Jones was eager to market his photographs as souvenirs for tourists and probably felt that the fifth man crowded the composition.

  • Provenance

    This negative was part of William Henry Fox Talbot's archive, which included photographs, correspondence, manuscripts and research notes. It was left to his son Charles Henry, who on his death, left its contents to his niece, Miss Matilda Gilchrist-Clark (1871-1958). In the 1934, she gave a large portion of this material to the then Science Museum and now the National Media Museum. See Larry J Schaaf, "Records of the Dawn of Photography; Talbot's Notebooks P & Q," (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. xv; Pam Roberts, "The Royal Photographic Society Collection," Bath: Royal Photographic Society, 1994, p. 53. Reference to the negative written in Rollin Buckman, "The Photographic Work of Calvert Richard Jones," (London: Science Museum: H.M.S.O., 1990), n.p.

190049212

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