Monday, November 28, 2016

Spirit photographs by William H Mumler

William H Mumler
Unidentified woman with female spirit
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

At the Getty Museum in Los Angeles there is an album of 'spirit photographs' created in and around Boston during the Civil War era by an underrated artist of the imagination named William H Mumler (1832-1884). In the great American free-enterprise tradition, he marketed tangible comforts to vulnerable people bereaved by deaths within their families. Mumler's ambitious nature (fueled, no doubt, by money hunger) induced him to supply these mourners with a level of technological reassurance far superior to the offerings of any organized religion.

William H Mumler
Bronson Murray with female spirit
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles 

William H Mumler
Unidentified man with female spirit
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Mrs Tinkham with child spirit
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Mr Tinkham (in photograph on table) with spirit wife and baby
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Mrs S A Floyd and male spirit wearing toga and head-feathers
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Mr Chapin, oil merchant (in framed image on table) with spirit wife and baby
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Unidentified woman with male spirit pointing upward
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Image of an unidentified woman (on table) with five spirits behind
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Mr Brown (in framed image on side table) and his spirit sister
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Mrs Swan with two spirits, male and female
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Image of unidentified woman (on table) with child spirit
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Ella Bonner with child spirit
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

William H Mumler
Unidentified man with three spirits
ca. 1862-75
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles