a short history of superimposition

A short history of superimposition: From spirit photography toearly cinema

Simone Natale*

Institut fr Medienkultur und Theater, University of Cologne, Germany

As several scholars have noted, the use of superimposition effects in cinema toconjure such apparitions as ghosts, fairies, devils, and other fantastic creaturesnds a signicant precedent in spirit photography, a spiritualist practice bywhich the image of one or more spirits was magically captured on a photo-graphic plate. However, arguing for a relationship of direct liation betweenspirit photography and the tricks employed in lm remains problematic, espe-cially given that spirit pictures were entangled with matters of religious belief.This article calls for a more solid insertion of spiritualisms visual culture intothe pre-history of lm practice, giving three main cases in support of the rela-tionship between spirit photography and early cinema. Firstly, the commercialuse of spirit photographs within the spiritualist movement suggests that the cir-culation of these images was not exclusively informed by matters of belief. Sec-ondly, the popularization of exposures of spirit photography operated bynumerous stage magicians in the late nineteenth century can contribute towardsexplaining the insertion of multiple-exposure techniques in the technical exper-tise of early lmmakers. Thirdly, a documented case in which spirit photographswere presented to a paying public in the vein of magic lantern entertainmentsdemonstrates that the spiritualist visual culture intersected the nineteenth-centurytradition of the projected image, too. Thus, by sketching a history of superimpo-sition effects in photography, stage magic, magic lantern, and cinema, this arti-cle claims that visual representations of ghosts in the nineteenth centuryconstantly wavered between religion and spectacle, ction and realism, and stilland moving pictures.

Keywords: spirit photography; magic lantern; spiritualism; stage magic; trickmovie; trick photography; early cinema; nineteenth century

In 1946, Andr Bazin published an essay in the French journal LEcran franaistitled The Life and Death of Superimposition. This short critical piece, based onthe analysis of the special effects employed in three American lms AlexanderHalls Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941), Sam Woods Our Town (1940) and GarsonKanins Tom, Dick and Harry (1941) sketched a history of the use of superimpo-sition in cinema from Mlis trick lms to the lmic production of Bazins time.In this chapter, a similar task will be undertaken. Differently from Bazin, however,this history of superimposition will start before Mlis, and even before the inven-tion of cinema. The underlying argument is that the visual device that involved the

*Email: [email protected]

Early Popular Visual CultureVol. 10, No. 2, May 2012, 125145

ISSN 1746-0654 print/ISSN 1746-0662 online 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2012.664745http://www.tandfonline.com

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superimposing of ghostly apparitions on a given background cannot be understoodby looking at the history of photography or at cinema alone. In order to be told,this history demands what Lynda Nead has called an integrated approach to visualmedia (2007, 2), which moves beyond the use of an interdisciplinary framework tofocus on the connections and spaces across media.

In the 1860s, more than a decade after the emergence of the spiritualist move-ment, a new genre of spirit manifestations was established: spirit photography. Thisphenomenon was not based on the capacity of the photographic medium to docu-ment what is visible to the human eye. On the contrary, spirit photographs werepresented as the result of photographys purported unsettling and uncanny faculty todetect the image of spirits that were among us, but went undetected by the humansenses. Just like trance mediums, the visual medium of photography was able toaccess the spirit world, offering to spiritualist believers the possibility to receive apost-mortem portrait of their beloved.

As it was soon pointed out by expert photographers and other sceptics, however,this apparently extraordinary phenomenon could be explained as the product of asimple photographic trick or accident. Most notably, critics pointed to multipleexposure and other superimposition techniques that were of common use in photo-graphic practice. Fake spirit photographs were produced to demonstrate the trick-ery that had been employed in spiritualism. During the second half of thenineteenth century, photographic images that featured a superimposed element wereat times believed to be real manifestations of the existence of spirits and ghosts, attimes debunked as a photographic trick, at times used for their entertaining andspectacular effect. Following the emergence of lm, multiple-exposure imagerybecame a common way to render on screen the apparition of ghosts and the occur-rence of dreams and visions. This article explores the circulation of a photographictechnique multiple exposure and a visual effect superimposition inspiritualism, stage magic, magic lantern projection, photography and cinema.

The trajectory from spirit photography to the motion picture found symbolicexpression at the very beginning of the lm era. As Matthew Solomon has noted(2010), one of the rst books ever published on the moving photographic image,W.K.L. and Antonia Dicksons History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, andKineto-phonograph, published in 1895, included a curious illustration, labelledPhotography Extraordinary. It was, in the tradition of mocked-up spirit photo-graphs, a photographic portrait of Dickson with a spectral double behind him (Fig-ure 1). Dickson, a photography specialist in Edisons laboratory, had contributed tothe invention of the rst commercial moving-picture technology, the kinetograph(and its viewing device, the kinetoscope). It was probably to acknowledge cinemasdebts to photography, which had played the role, as he put it, of the birthplace andnursery of the kinetoscope (1895, 19), that he and his wife inserted this image inthe book. It is intriguing, however, to read it as a dedication to the visual techniqueof superimposition. Dicksons spirit was just a sample of the ghosts that multipleexposure would eventually conjure through its new dimension, the moving photo-graphic image.

Several scholars, including Franois Jost (1998), Matthew Solomon (2003,2010), Karen Beckman (2003), Lynda Nead (2007), and Tom Gunning (2007), haverecognized the debts of early cinema and of the trick movie genre in particular to the iconography of spirit photography. Effort has not been made, however, tounderstand how images that were considered truthful manifestation of spirits by

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Figure 1. A page from William Kennedy Laurie and Antonia Dicksons History of thekinetograph, kinetoscope, and kinetophonograph (1895), illustrated with a fake spiritphotograph.

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believers could be linked to cinema, a technology that, notwithstanding the apocry-phal anecdotes regarding early cinematic audiences panicking before the image ofan oncoming train (Bottomore 1999), did not attract the same kind of faith. In thisregard, this article gives three insights supporting the connection between spirit pho-tography and early lm tricks. First, the fact that spirit photographs were a widelycommercialized commodity within the spiritualist movement suggests that its usewas not exclusively concerned with matters of belief. Thus, spirit photography canalso be considered a visual attraction, capable of attracting the curiosity of spiritual-ists and non-spiritualists alike. Second, multiple-exposure techniques used to pro-duce these kinds of images were popularized by stage magicians in the second halfof the nineteenth century, with the aim of debunking spirit photography as a merephotographic trick. The insertion of superimposition techniques in the history ofstage magic, a tradition that was central to the formation of many early lmmakers(Barnouw 1981), might help explain why such practices were so productively repli-cated in the trick lm genre. Finally, a documented case in which spirit photographswere presented to a paying public as a kind of magic lantern show demonstratesthat spirit photography, before the introduction of cinema, interacted with the nine-teenth-century tradition of the projected image.

The circulation of superimposition in multiple technological and cultural con-texts contributed to shape it as a body of technologies and knowledge that waveredbetween realism and fantasy, stasis and movement, ction and belief. Since the1850s, when David Brewster described a trick to produce the photograph of a spec-tre and the London Stereoscopic Company started to produce a series called TheGhost in the Stereoscope, superimposition was displaced through a number of tech-nologies and cultural environments, including spiritualism, trick photography, magiclantern, and stage magic. Comparable images, produced through similar means,were presented in these various contexts as an audacious trick, the demonstration ofthe existence of spirits, or a way to visualize dreaming. It was this displacementinto different technological and cultural worlds that ultimately xed the meaning ofsuperimposition at the intersection of spiritualism and magic, photography and cin-ema, realism and fantasy. Following the visual technique of superimposition in theworlds of photographic and projected images, from tienne-Gaspard Robertsonsphantasmagoria to William Mumlers spirit photographs, from photographic amuse-ments to stage magic and the trick lm, I will look at superimposition as a kind ofvisual medium in its own right. Despite its being continuously reinvented andreconstructed, its history reveals the trajectory of a visual culture that was hauntedby ghosts, dreams, visions, and the contradictory status of the photographic image.

A visual commodity

In 1862, the American spiritualist movement was startled by the news that a newkind of spirit manifestation had been discovered by an engraver from Boston,William Mumler. Mumler, as the readers of the spiritualist journal The Banner ofLight came to discover, had been able for the rst time in history to produce thephotograph of a spirit (Child 1862). In the following months, he opened a photo-graphic studio in Boston, where paying sitters were offered the opportunity to bephotographed in company of the spirit of deceased relatives and friend. Seven yearslater, in 1869, as Mumler was brought to trial for fraud in New York and the newsspread in the American press, spirit photography became widely known also beyond

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the boundaries of the spiritualist movement. Though Mumler was declared innocent,the prosecutors having failed to explain with certainty which procedure Mumlerused to perform the trick, the trial succeeded in making spirit photography an issuefor public debate. Spirit photography became a hot item in the New York dailypress and in widely circulating national magazines including Harpers Weekly(Kaplan 2008). Probably stimulated by the impressive popularity of Mumlers case,others followed his example, producing photographs of spirits in the United States,Britain, and France in the subsequent decades (Coates 1911, 57). Although repeat-edly exposed as a mere photographic trick, spirit photography remained a very rele-vant practice within the spiritualist eld for decades, starting to decline inpopularity only in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

Literature dealing with spiritualisms connections to visual media tends to seephotography as an evidentiary medium, through which spiritualists searched for atangible conrmation of the trustworthiness of their faith (Harvey 2007; Jolly 2006;Chroux et al. 2005).1 Film, by contrast, is usually regarded as working on the levelof fantasy and narration, conjuring images of ghosts only to embed them in a c-tional world that, implicitly or explicitly, denies their reality. As Matthew Solomonhas noted, cinematography was very rarely made into a tool for psychical research(2010, 24). However, as contemporary scholarship has highlighted, photographysevidentiary status in the nineteenth century was not as unchallenged as we tendedto think. Authors such as Jennifer Tucker (2005), Jennifer L. Mnookin (1998), andMichael Leja (2004) have demonstrated that the images produced by Mumler andother spirit photographers stimulated a lively debate on the manipulability of thephotographic image in the nineteenth century. Tucker, in particular, argues that thiscontroversy made the issues of trust in photographic production visible to a widerVictorian public and focused attention as never before on the necessary qualica-tions to make authentic photographs (124). Furthermore, spiritualist sources revealthat the attitude of believers in spirit communication toward photographic technolo-gies was ambivalent, too. Photography was considered, also and perhaps especiallywithin the spiritualist movement, as a problematic evidence form and as a highlymanipulable technology. Spiritualist publications frequently recognized the possibil-ity of producing images of ghosts by purely technical, non-spiritual means (Fritz1873, 81). Many spiritualist leaders and mediums openly criticized the practice ofspirit photography; this is the case, for instance, of the famous medium DanielDunglas Home, who overtly explained how to produce spirit photographs throughoptical tricks (1877, 3606).

Therefore, if photography was often employed by spiritualists to provide evi-dence supporting their claims, its use within the spiritualist movement is much morecomplex than usually acknowledged. As I have shown elsewhere, nineteenth-cen-tury spiritualism was a matter not only of religious and superstitious beliefs, butalso of entertainment and spectacle: mediums often performed on the theatricalstage, before a paying public, and even private sances had a high degree of drama-tization (Natale 2011). This was also the case with spirit photography. Spirit photo-graphs were also visual attractions, and could be regarded as a curiosity byspiritualists and non-spiritualists alike. We should remember that photography especially after the positive/negative process became dominant is a commoditythat can be easily reproduced and commercialized. It is perhaps for this reason that,as historian of spiritualism Robert S. Cox has noted, while spiritualist sances weresometimes performed privately without charging a fee, non-commercial instances of


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spirit photography are virtually non-existent (2003, 134). As a commercial com-modity, spirit photography circulated within the channels of spiritualist circles andcommunities and was frequently advertised in spiritualist journals. For instance, in1882 copies of Recognized Spirit-Photographs could be acquired at the price of1s. each by the readers of the London spiritualist magazine Medium and Daybreak(Anon. 1882a). The commercialization of spirit pictures also concerned, to a certainextent, those who were not involved in spiritualism: the American showman P.T.Barnum, for one, had acquired some prints of Mumlers photographs for hisAmerican Museum, where all genres of visual curiosities were exhibited, a fewyears before the photographers famous New York trial (Barnum 1866, 117).

In this sense, the representation of ghosts in visual media can be followedthrough the still and the moving image as a trajectory in which ctional andpurportedly real apparitions of ghosts mutually reinforced their appeal with apublic of sitters, viewers and, ultimately, spectators. Although spirit photographswere believed by many to be truly manifestations of spirit agency, they wereseen by others as a curiosity, rather than as an object of faith. As I will show,numerous late-nineteenth-century attempts to debunk this spiritualist techniquefurther testify to this merging of spectacle with religious and superstitiousbelief.

Debunking spirit photography

The advent of spiritualism in the nineteenth century resulted not only in a craze forspirit sances, but also in an unprecedented effort on the part of sceptics to exposebeliefs in ghosts as superstition and fraud. This enlightening attempt gave rise to animpressive body of publications (see Natale 2010). In this context, spirit photogra-phy was demystied as a photographic trick, and fake spirit photographs weredescribed as the result of multiple exposure and other techniques for the purpose ofexposing the dishonesty of mediums.

Applications of trick photography to produce illusions of magical appearancewere known as photographic amusements during the second half of the nine-teenth century. An article published in the British Journal of Photographyincluded in the category of photographic amusements an extended class of effects,produced by the aid of the camera, which, in their complete state, serve to excitethe curiosity or the amusement of the public, and in some measure to justify theoccasionally-lengthy correspondence which we have seen in our scientic journalsto explain and account for them (Statham 1880, 79). In this context, prior toMumlers introduction of this phenomenon into the spiritualist world, the Scottishphysicist Sir David Brewster, one of the main characters involved in the mid-nine-teenth-century popularization of stereoscopic photography, suggested a techniqueto produce, for the purpose of amusement (1856, 205), an effect similar to spiritphotography. Following Brewsters suggestion, ante-litteram spirit photographswere successively produced: the Ghost in the Stereoscope series, for instance,were a series of stereoscopic prints of this kind that was commercialized in the1850s.2 But the introduction of spirit photography in the 1860s altered the contextfor use and production of these images. Photographs in the style of the ghost inthe stereoscope series were now explicitly linked to spiritualism, and the purposeof amusement came together with the moral duty of exposing superstition andgullibility.

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During the late nineteenth century, photographic tricks were often described inpopular scientic publications such as Scientic American or the French journal LaNature, which published a series of articles later collected in Hopkins Magic: StageIllusions and Scientic Diversions, Including Trick Photography (1897). Containingthe explanation of a number of illusory techniques taken from stage magic andprestidigitation, this book went through several editions at the turn of the century. Itincluded chapters on chronophotography and the projection of moving pictures andan entire section dedicated to popular photographic diversions. Also, a highlydetailed explanation of how to perform the photographs of so-called spirits wasgiven, in the hope that they will be made merely for amusement, and, if possible,to expose persons who practice on the gullibility of experienced persons (435).Engravings illustrated how multiple exposure could be used to produce so-calledspirit photographs (Figure 2), as well as other photographic illusions (Figures 35).

The main context for imitations of spirit photography was stage magic. Afterthe rise of the spiritualist movement in the mid nineteenth century, magiciansengaged in the polemical attempt to demonstrate that behind the craze for spiritsances was concealed the trickery of fraudulent mediums. Pointing out that theirknowledge in illusionism and optics allowed them to recognize and explain spiritsances, stage conjurors exploited the fascination for the supernatural, often per-forming on the stage a kind of anti-spiritualist show that aimed to reproduce techni-cally the phenomena of spiritualism. Although spirit photography could not beconveniently exhibited on the magic stage, exposs of this spiritualist practice can

Figure 2. A spirit photograph. From: Albert A. Hopkins, Magic: Stage Illusions andScientic Diversions, Including Trick Photography (New York, 1897).


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be found in several printed sources that were published in connection to magiciansdebunking of spiritualism. In contrast to their stage shows, these images broke withthe magicians tradition of live performance. Instead of being produced in real timethrough mirror or hidden projections, the ghostly illusion was now conjured withthe photographic medium. The effect, however, was not less spectacular. A particu-larly interesting example of this anti-spiritualist spirit photography is the engravingused as frontispiece for The Supernatural?, an 1891 book that featured a chapter onmodern spiritualism written by the prominent English magician John Nevil Maske-lyne. In this ironical and symbolic picture, the spirit of John Nevil Maskelyneappears beside the author of the book, Lionel A. Weatherly, as if intending to clasphis hand (Figure 6). In the text, it was Maskelyne himself who explained how theseimages could be produced, pointing to two possible tricks: double-printing, which

Figure 3. Composite Photograph in Two Poses, at Different Distances, on the Same Plate.From: Albert A. Hopkins, Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientic Diversions, Including TrickPhotography (New York, 1897).

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involved the superimposition of two negatives on the same print, and double-exposure, a technique that followed the method illustrated by Brewster. In bothcases, the second exposure or print was too brief for the image to be fully xed.The result, Maskelyne explained, was that whilst all else is sharp and well-dened,the spirit is represented by a hazy outline, through which all that is behind itshows. There is nothing very spiritual about this, is there? (1891, 2034).

Among other fake spirit photographs made by magicians are the two imagespublished in Carl Willmanns 1886 Moderne Wunder [Modern Wonders]. Willmann,a German watchmaker and amateur magician, wrote several books on stage magicand was engaged in exposing spiritualist trickery; in Moderne Wunder, he madeclear that such spirit photographs were produced through fully explainable, arti-cial means (1886, 211). The rst engraving, titled Jacoby in the Realm of hisGhosts (So-called Spirit Photography), was a relatively conventional image inwhich the magician Jacoby seemed frightened before a spectral apparition (Figure 7).The other, The Liberation of the Prestidigitator Jacoby, involved a more compli-cated multiple exposure, incorporating apparitions of a ghost, a skull, and a levitat-ing hand (Figure 8). This illustration seems to play ironically with the tradition ofescape art, which had been practiced in spiritualism by the Davenport Brothers, andin magic by a number of showmen, including the American Harry Houdini, whowould eventually make it his most successful feat at the beginning of the twentiethcentury.

Magicians and other opponents of spiritualism kept alive the debunking of spiritphotography as multiple exposure well beyond the end of the nineteenth century.This tradition also contributed to the questioning of photographys claims of

Figure 4. Facsimile of a Composite Photograph. From: Albert A. Hopkins, Magic: StageIllusions and Scientic Diversions, Including Trick Photography (New York, 1897).


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objectivity, and continued to foreground the ability of this medium to create c-tional worlds and also, in cases when there was the intent to deceive, to lie. As adebunker of spiritualism pointed out some years later, so unreliable I consider anyphotograph to which is attached the slightest taint of spiritualism, that when in thisconnection I have been asked, Can a photograph lie?, I have frequently replied,A spirit photograph is absolutely unable to speak the truth (Fawkes 1920, 99).

Projecting ghosts

The history of superimposition is connected not only with the photographic med-ium, but also with the projected image. During the nineteenth century, the technol-ogy of magic lantern projection developed as a spectacular recreational anddidactical means. In this process, a number of techniques were introduced to createvisual effects that could stimulate the wonder and the attention of its spectator. Oneof these, involving the employment of two magic lanterns to superpose a gure ona background, has been compared to the use of superimposition in early cinema(Mannoni 2002, 50). This, however, was not the only means by which superimposi-tion intertwined with the projection of images. Magic lanterns were used for theprojection of photographic images that featured the trick of multiple exposure; andin at least one case, as I will show, they were used for the projection of spirit pho-tographs, too.

Figure 5. Group in Open Air, in Two Different Poses on One Plate. From: Albert A.Hopkins, Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientic Diversions, Including Trick Photography(New York, 1897).

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The technique of superposing one image over the other had been common inmagic lantern shows at least since the spectacles of phantasmagoria popularized byEtienne Gaspard Robertson in the 1790s. Playing on the uncanny relationshipbetween the projected images and the apparitions of ghosts, Robertson staged hisperformances in the lugubrious rooms of an abandoned chapel in the Couvent desCapucines in Paris. Although he presented his shows as a spectacle, and introducedthem with a warning against superstition and impostors, Robertsons phantasmago-ria played with the fascination for the worlds of the supernatural and the occult.

Figure 6. A Spirit Photograph: The Wraith of Mr. Maskelyne Appearing to Dr.Weatherly. Frontispiece to Lionel A. Weatherly, The Supernatural? (Bristol, 1891).


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The concealment of the projector, which remained invisible to the spectators, con-tributed to creating the mysterious atmosphere of these spectacles. He used multiplevisual effects, such as dissolves and the illusion of movement, which he obtainedthrough the means of mechanical slides and by moving the lantern forward andback, making an image seemingly approaching the spectator.3 The gures weresometimes projected onto smoke, creating the effect that the apparitions were oat-ing over the audience.

Figure 7. Jacoby im Reiche seiner Geister: Sogenannte Geister-Photographier [Jacoby inthe Realm of his Spirits: So-Called Spirit Photography]. From Carl Willmann, ModerneWunder: Natrliche Erklrung der lteren wie neueren Geheimnisse der Spiritisten undAntispiritisten, Geisterritieren, Hellseher, Gedankenleser, Heilmedien, Mnemotechniker undRechenknstler (Leipzig, 1886), p. 212.

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Superimposition in Robertsons phantasmagoria was performed through the useof two projectors. The rst lantern usually provided the background, while the otherwas mobile, and could produce the illusion that the apparition, often a ghost or askeleton, was moving toward the public. This trick was often used by lanternists inthe nineteenth century, building a long tradition of superimposition with the magiclantern (Barber 1989); a similar technique was involved in the illusion known asPeppers Ghost, which was rst presented at Londons Royal Polytechnic in 1863and combined real actors with projected images (Brooker 2007).

The employment of a dark background in the superimposition trick is commonto magic lantern projections and spirit photography. In early cinema, lmmakers

Fig. 8. Die Entfesselung der Prestidigitateurs Jacoby [The Liberation of the PrestidigitatorJacoby]. From Carl Willmann, Moderne Wunder: Natrliche Erklrung der lteren wieneueren Geheimnisse der Spiritisten und Antispiritisten, Geisterritieren, Hellseher,Gedankenleser, Heilmedien, Mnemotechniker und Rechenknstler (Leipzig, 1886), p. 66.


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such as Georges Mlis would eventually adopt the same procedure: in LeMlomane [The Melomaniac] (1903), for instance, the dark background allowsMlis to make his heads appear on the musical staff in the top part of the screen.The common use of superimposition in magic lantern shows may have played arole in the establishment of superimposition in early lm. Indeed, as Deac Rossell(1998, 153), among others, has documented, many pioneers and early practitionersof the moving image had a background in the art of lantern projection.

The magic lantern was also used to project photographic superimpositions. InApril 1882, the spiritualist journal Medium and Daybreak published the report ofan evening ceremony organized in London to celebrate the 34th anniversary ofmodern spiritualism. It was, according to this report, a general meeting of Britishspiritualists that gathered together representatives of many spiritualist communitiesoutside the capital. The Neumeyer Hall, which had been chosen to host the celebra-tion, was soon crammed to capacity; chairs had to be placed in every availablespace to accommodate the number of visitors. For those who had not reserved aplace, ordinary tickets were sold at the entrance, where the pressure of the crowdbecame quite intense. But neither the delay nor the discomfort of the line could ruinthe atmosphere of the gathering; as the reporter put it, on the contrary the principleof love seemed to dominate so completely that it was a pleasure to press the oneagainst the other (Anon. 1882b, 257).

A solo pianist inaugurated the evenings entertainment. After this musical intro-duction, the programme went on with the introductory addresses of the celebrationscommittee, the performance of a vocalist, through whose voice the spirit worldseems to breathe its harmonies (258), and two trance lectures performed by spiritu-alist mediums. Then, it was time for the principal attraction, spirit photography. Alantern-slide operator, Mr. Middleton,4 set up the projection, while a piano playerfurnished musical accompaniment. Lights were turned off in order to ensure a suit-able condition for the projection. When the images started to be projected, JamesBurns, the editor of the Medium and Daybreak, acted as presenter, introducingevery slide with his descriptive remarks. The projection included some illustra-tions and photographs that represented the salient moments in the history of spiritu-alism during the past decades, as well as a few samples of manifestations, such asslate writing and direct drawing. But the attention soon turned toward spirit photo-graphs. The rst series of images of this kind was titled The Substance of whichSpirit-Photographs are Made (260) and included some photographs of mediumswith a halo of light over their hands or body a phenomenon that, according toBurns, modern science had been unable to explain. The next sequence which,with 37 images, accounted for the majority of the slides exhibited the spirit pho-tographs of Frederick Hudson, whose reproduction had been repeatedly offered onsale to the readers of the Medium and Daybreak. A few examples of spirit imagesmade by other photographers, among them some by William Mumler, completedthe 40-minute projection, which was followed by a speech from the mediumGeorgiana Houghton and by a few words of thanks from Hudson.

While in the case of the phantasmagoria and other spectacular uses of magiclantern tricks the illusion or, in the believers perspective, the spirit manifestation took place right before the spectator, the projection of spirit photography is in acertain regard a different case, since the manipulation preceded the show, havingbeen produced by the camera while taking the photograph and not directly beforethe audience of the Neumeyer Hall. The magic lantern was employed to project on

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the stage images that had been previously made; it was not used to conjure thesuperimposition effect, nor was it involved in the reputedly supernatural phenome-non. The audience, however, did not seem to be completely aware of this distinc-tion. Reportedly, the magic lantern spiritualist show was seen by many as a mysticevent. As the reporter stated, the darkness which prevailed during the exhibitionwas very favourable for the exercise of the clairvoyance (263), and several amongthe public claimed to have seen visions of spirits, or to have felt the presence ofthem. The account in the Medium and Daybreak mentioned a spectator afrming tohave seen the apparition of a horseman, over whose head six different spirits of dif-ferent nationalities were hovering. Apparently, then, a trace of the supernatural pres-ence which, according to the spiritualists claims, had produced the images wasbelieved to be carried also in the slides projected before the audience. This mightsuggest that not only the photograph as a concrete object, but also the visual repre-sentation as such, regardless of the medium employed to show it, was believed tobe of spiritualist meaning.

The account of this event, apart from providing proof of the richness of the spir-itualist visual culture, demonstrates that at least on one occasion although the useof a consistent number of magic-lantern glass slides featuring spirit photographs inthe London celebrative evening show indicate there could have been more eventsof this kind spirit photography intertwined with the technology of the projectedimage. Although the author of the report insisted that the sole purpose of theevening was the work of the angel-world amongst humanity (257), the gatheringof the London spiritualist community was presented as a highly spectacular event,with the public taking part in a performance that resembled not only magic lanternshows of the time, but also the spectacular situation of early lm shows. In fact,some of the conditions of display that were highlighted by the author of this report,such as the darkness of the room, the musical accompaniment, the paying public,and the presence of a presenter who gave commentaries and explanations, came tobe customary some decades later for the projection of lms.

Towards the trick movie

In early cinema, the technique of multiple exposure was successfully introduced ina genre the trick lm that rose to great popularity during the rst years of themoving image. It was particularly the involvement of lmmakers who were impli-cated in the tradition of stage magic that contributed to popularizing this techniquein lm production. Through their creative solutions, photographic tricks wereapplied to the new moving images, and new tricks, such as substitution splicing,were successfully established. Multiple exposure was used to produce several differ-ent effects, including dissolves, replications of characters or objects, superimposi-tions and transparencies.

Bazins essay on superimposition opened with a consideration of the coexistenceof realism and fantasy on the cinematic screen. The fantastic in the cinema, heargued, is possible only because of the irresistible realism of the photographicimage. It is the image that can bring us face to face with the unreal, that can intro-duce the unreal into the world of the visible. As an example, Bazin mentionedJames Whales The Invisible Man (1933), arguing that as an animated lm it wouldhave immediately lost all interest, since what appealed to the audience was thecontradiction between the irrefutable objectivity of the photographic image and the


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unbelievable nature of the events that it depicts (2002). The observation that real-ism is needed to bring the viewer into the world of fantasy could be applied to thehistory of superimposition before cinema. The most astounding paradox of thistechnique is that it was regarded at the same time as a spirit manifestation by spiri-tualists and as a mere trick by magicians, expert photographers, and sceptics in gen-eral. In this sense, superimposition brought to cinema what Dan North called thesynthesis between photographic similitude and its fantastic, transformative effect(2008, 49). The fact that multiple exposure was used in two contexts, spiritualismand magic, exploiting respectively its realist and its fantastic power, may explainthe fascination of early lmmakers with this technique and its extensive employ-ment in the trick lm.

The relationship between stage magic and early cinema has been increasinglyacknowledged in lm history. As Erik Barnouw, the author of a pioneering work onthis topic, put it, given the extent to which professional magicians relied on techni-cal means and magic lantern projection to perform their tricks, it is not surprisingthat the debut of the Lumires cinmatographe set off a gold rush in the magicarena (1981, 38). Practising theatrical conjurers such as Gaston Velle, Walter Booth,J. Stuart Blackton, Albert E. Smith, Georges Mlis, and many others were amongthe rst motion picture exhibitionists and lmmakers; magic theatres, such as theEgyptian Hall in London, the Thtre Robert-Houdin and the Thtre Isola in Paris,were among the places where the earliest projection with cinematographic devicestook place, and Tom Gunning (1989, 10), Lucy Fischer (1979), Simon During(2002, 13577), and Karen Beckman (2003), among others, have all posited thatmany spectators of the time experienced cinema as a kind of magic show.

Notwithstanding Matthew Solomons convincing demonstration that magic dia-logued with cinema well beyond the novelty period (2010, 110), the most relevantcontribution of stage magic to lm practice is certainly the trick lm. Trick lmswere composed of a series of apparitions, transformations, and magical attractionsthat aimed at astonishing the spectator with the visual wonder of complex visualtricks. Especially in the earliest years, they did not rely on a convincing narrativeplot, but on a series of magical attractions that were performed through photo-graphic tricks such as substitution splicing and multiple exposure. Filmmakers suchas Georges Mlis, a professional stage magician who owned the ThtreRobert-Houdin in Paris, and George Albert Smith, who produced a number of lmsof this genre in Britain, were the protagonists of this genre. Devils, fairies, skeletonsand ghosts were, alongside the stage magician who was often the protagonist ofthese short movies, the gures that populated this imaginary world.

Images such as those technically created by Maskelyne and Willmann demon-strate that photographic tricks were in use in the world of magic and illusionismwell before the invention of cinema. The exposure of spirit photography can thusbe seen as evidence of the pre-cinematic involvement of stage magicians in the artof chemicals, dark rooms, and photographic manipulation, an art that was at theroot of the success in early cinema of magicians such as Mlis and Smith. It isprobably no coincidence that multiple exposure and other darkroom tricks were rstpopularized in the motion picture by those lmmakers who came to lm productionfrom the stage magic profession, and who were particularly aware of the articesused by spiritualist mediums.

In 1898, the British pioneer of trick lm George Albert Smith produced a lmcalled Photographing a Ghost. Although no copies of the original lm have been

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preserved, Smiths catalogue description offers insight into its simple plot, whichinvolved the comical and unfortunate attempt of a photographer to take the pictureof a spirit (Chanan 1996, 1178). The text mentions that the ghost was perfectlytransparent, so that the background was visible behind him, and that the ghost alsokept disappearing and reappearing. Smith who, before becoming involved in lmproduction, had been a magic lanternist, a portrait photographer, and a stage hypno-tist, and took part in the Society for Psychical Researchs experiments on hypnotismand thought-reading (Gray 1998) certainly had a career trajectory that was remi-niscent of the spiritualist practitioners of spirit photography. The catalogue descrip-tion suggests that he used multiple exposure to insert the transparent image of thespectre into the scene, performing through the moving photograph something simi-lar to what Mumler and other spirit photographers had been doing with the stillimage. In other lms of the same period, Smith skilfully exploited superimpositiontricks; he even obtained a patent for double exposure (Brosnan 1974, 11), which heused for representing a ghost and a vision in his lm The Corsican Brothers.According to Frank Gray, he was the rst British lmmaker to render ghost illu-sions and vision scenes through multiple exposure (Gray 2000, 177).

Georges Mlis was also involved in the tradition of spiritualisms debunking.One of his most successful magic plays, Le dcapit recalcitrant [The RecalcitrantDecapitated Man], popular enough to be performed 1200 times at the theatre Rob-ert-Houdin, featured the decapitation of a spiritualist medium who annoyed the pub-lic by assuring them of the trustworthiness of spirit sances. Mlis also shotlarmoire des frres Davenport [The Cabinet Trick of the Davenport Brothers](1902) mocking the performances of two famous American stage mediums. LikeSmith, Mlis also shot a lm on spirit photography, called Le portrait spirite [ASpiritualist Photographer] (1903).

Mlis familiarity with spirit photography might date back to 1884, when hesojourned in London to learn about modern stage magic techniques. During thisperiod he became a devotee of the most famous London magic theatre, the Egyp-tian Hall, and a friend of John Nevil Maskelyne. In the years 18834, Maskelynegave 200 anti-spiritualist performances at the Egyptian Hall, during which, as heput it, I explained every trick, together with several improvements of my own(Maskelyne 1891, 190). At the beginning of the 1880s, several spirit photographerswere active in London (Coates 1911, 5760), and it is possible that Maskelyne wasalready involved in the production of fake spirit photographs like the one he laterpublished in Weatherlys book (1891). In 1884, Mlis was also in contact withDavid Devant, another Egyptian Hall magician who after 1896 introduced lm pro-jections in his shows.5 Devant was known at the time for making a life-sized por-trait of a woman came to life, an illusion that some decades later would eventuallyinspire Mlis Le portrait spirite.

Multiple exposure and superimposition effects were widely used in lm produc-tion in the following decades, even after the trick lm had virtually disappeared asa genre. In 1922, for instance, the American magician Harry Houdini produced andacted in The Man from Beyond, a lm featuring ghostly apparitions using thetechnique of multiple exposure. Although Houdini had already been the protagonistof several non-ction and ction lms (Solomon 2010, 80101), this was the rstof his lms to rely on the supernatural and, in particular, on themes taken frombeliefs in spiritualism and reincarnation. Using superimposition to visually expressspirit apparitions, Houdini deliberately mocked spirit photography. During his entire


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career, he had been involved in the exposure of spiritualist trickery, claiming toconsider it a moral duty (1924, 12) and comparing mediums to gamblers whoresort to deception and take advantage of the sitters at all angles (245). The col-lection he donated after his death to the Library of Congress, which he described asone of the largest libraries in the world on psychic phenomena, Spiritualism,magic, witchcraft, demonology, evil spirits, etc., some of the material going back asfar as 1489 (Salamanca 1942, 325), reveals how anti-spiritualist activities not onlyplayed a part in his shows, but were a sort of obsession to him. The image of thespectres appearing in The Man from Beyond can be considered a kind of homage tothe iconography of spirit photography, a phenomenon he exposed as multiple expo-sure in his A Magician Among the Spirits (1924).

Conclusion

In A Theory of Play and Fantasy, Gregory Bateson argues that a crucial stage inthe evolution of communication occurs when the organism gradually ceases torespond quite automatically to the mood-signs of another and becomes able torecognize the sign as a signal, that is, to recognize that the other individuals andits own signals are only signals, that can be trusted, distrusted, falsied, denied,amplied, corrected, and so forth (1955, 40). As a consequence, the denition ofan event as serious or non-serious will vary, depending on the meaning that an indi-vidual gives of this event. In some cases, however, we may be uncertain if the rightinterpretation of a situation is reality or play. Batesons suggestion, recalled byErving Goffman in his discussion of frame analysis (1974, 25), can be helpful inunderstanding how the ghostly image of superimposition wavered between ctionaland religious contexts, lacking a precise denition of its meaning, or perhaps allow-ing for its annexation to the worlds of belief and entertainment at the same time.Flowing through technological and cultural contexts as distinct as spiritualism, themagic lantern lecturing circuit, stage magic, photographic amusements and earlycinema, superimposition effects produced ambivalent images that could carry theviewer into ctional realms or passionate beliefs, into the marvels of illusion or thespirit world. Depending on the perspective from which they were regarded, theyopened the door to realms that were only apparently contradictory. This is probablythe reason why superimposition, as a visual practice, was so widely employed inthe early years of the motion picture. As Michael Chanan has argued, cinema wasfrom its very start an art of both realism and illusion, veracity and deception,transparency and trickery in short, a highly paradoxical medium (1996, 117).Superimposition, being the subject of different and sometimes divergent interpreta-tions the revelation of spirit agency, a mere trick, a photographic accident seemsto have shared with lm this paradoxical character.

AcknowledgementsI wish to thank Silvio Alovisio, Nicoletta Leonardi and Matthew Solomon for theircommentaries upon an earlier version of this text. I also thank editor Andrew Shail for histhorough reading and suggestions.

Notes1. With some relevant exceptions: see, in particular, Tucker (2005), Mnookin (1998), and

Leja (2004).

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2. Tom Gunning pointed out that perhaps the most extraordinary historical fact aboutSpirit Photographs lies in the fact that such images existed for years before any Spiritu-alist seemed to have claimed them (2007, 112).

3. The literature on Robertsons phantasmagoria is extensive. See, among others, Mannoni(1995), Milner (1982) and Gunning (2003).

4. This Mr. Middleton could be Thomas John Middleton, who was active in London inthose years as a magic lantern manufacturer, or a member of his family. See http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/m.php.

5. Also some of the producers of fake-spirit photographs, such as John Nevil Maskelyne,were directly engaged in producing lms during its novelty period. Maskelyne appearedin a 1896 lm by Robert Paul and produced trick lms together with his son Nevil inthe following years. The Egyptian Hall hosted lm shows from March 1896.

Notes on contributorSimone Natale is Postdoctoral Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at theInstitut fr Medienkultur und Theater at the University of Cologne, Germany. He haspublished in several journals, including Media History, the Canadian Journal ofCommunication and the European Journal of Communication, and is presently working on amonograph titled The Spectacular Supernatural: Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern ShowBusiness.

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a short history of superimposition

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