CREATING THE REAL FROM THE UNREAL

n the world of motion pictures, multimedia has become the quintessential

creative technique of the modern era. Emerging from the skills of drawing,
sculpting, painting, engineering, and computer programming, mixed with fantasy and
creativity, springs a new expression. Since the flickering images of bison on cave
walls, allegorical representations of the immaterial have intrigued humanity.
But wait, not so fast....
Back at the dawn of photography, this newly discovered medium was a perfect tool
to create "real" images that would startle and entice the imagination of the public,
such as in the story of William Howard Mumler (1.832-1884), who took the first so-
called "spirit photograph". In his portrait photographs of prominent members of soci-
et.y, next to the bankers and statesmen would appear faint images of deceased relatives
or acquaintances. Not claiming to be a medium who called up spirits, he insisted that
he was only a hand in the service of spectra. The years following the Civil War were
witness to a society in the midst of a cultural upheaval, and spiritualism found fertile
ground for growth. His business was so successful that he bought out the gallery where
he was working in New York City's photographic district and opened his own studio.
Spiritualists, well-known photographers, and skeptics investigated his work, question-
ing his credibility. In 1863 he was arrested for fraud and brought to trial. However, no
trickery could be proven and Mumler was acquitted. The publicity that the trial
generated should have had a positive effect on Mumler's business; nevertheless,
the Photography Section of the American Institute denounced spirit photogra-
phy, Mumler's business plummeted, and he died in poverty. Although he had
always presented himself as a simple servant of the spirits and an amateur pho-
tographer, his obituary cites him as a well-known inventor with numerous
patents in his name: an electromagnetic passenger register for street cars, an
apparatus that used electricity to light gas lamps, and the "Mumler Process" that
gave book publishers and newspapers the ability to illustrate their stories using
actual photographic images instead of lined wood reproductions.
During that same period, the photographer Eug&ne Thiebault was hired by the
illusionist Henry Robin to photograph his new "phantasmagorical" perform-
ance that he had created through the use of mirrors. It took place at his theater
on Boulevard du Temple in Paris. Robin's theatrical display was aimed at uncov-
ering the absurdity of spirit phenomena by reproducing it artificially and record-
ing it on film, thus, for many, ending the disputed photography of ghosts.
As skeletons and mirrors were Robin's props, today multimedia is what we
use to express and actuate our most fantastical thoughts. It has allowed us to
turn the most absurd situations into reality, from soaring Superman to sentient
robots, liquefied beings, aliens, zombies, T-Rex, and King Kong. We now live in
an age where "if you can think it, you can create it," in my point of view.

Giancarlo Biagi

On this page, top: The medium Master Herrod with the spirits of Europe, Africa NOTES:
and America by William Howard Mumler (ca. 1870), albumen silver print. Clement Ch6roux, Andreas Fischer, Pierre Apraxine, De nis
On this page, bottom: Henri Robin and a specter by Eugine Thiebault (ca. Canguilhem, Sophie Schmit, The Perfect Medium: Photoography
and the Occult (New Haven and London: Yale Universi ty
1863), albumen silver print, 9 inches high. Press,
2005l. pp. 20-28.

SCULPTURE REVIfEW 7
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TITLE: Creating the Real from the Unreal

SOURCE: Sculpt Rev 58 no3 Fall 2009

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