To Which Earthly Categories Do Not Apply: Spirit Photography, Filipino Ghosts, and the Global Occult at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

In this article I examine an album of spirit photographs published in Barcelona circa 1903. The album comprises two photograph collections, one of photos taken in a studio in Manila, the Philippines, another belonging to Dr. Theodore Hansmann, a German immigrant to the USA who was one of the country...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cruz, Deirdre de la (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Taylor & Francis [2017]
In: Material religion
Year: 2017, Volume: 13, Issue: 3, Pages: 301-328
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Philippines / Spirit photography / Occultism / Spread of / History 1860-1920
IxTheo Classification:AZ New religious movements
KBM Asia
Further subjects:B Photography
B Empire
B Philippines
B Spiritism
B Spiritualism
B History
B Supernatural
B Occult
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:In this article I examine an album of spirit photographs published in Barcelona circa 1903. The album comprises two photograph collections, one of photos taken in a studio in Manila, the Philippines, another belonging to Dr. Theodore Hansmann, a German immigrant to the USA who was one of the country's most ardent advocates and researchers of spirit photography. Apart from their overt share in a genre, it is unclear what connects these two collections and who exactly brought them together. I draw from this ambiguity in order to explore the tension between spiritism as a philosophy and practice that traveled via historically specific colonial routes and were localized to particular political and cultural contexts, and spiritism as a global occult movement founded precisely on the promise of transcending metaphysical and spatial boundaries.
ISSN:1751-8342
Contains:Enthalten in: Material religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2017.1326704