A brief history of ghosts and spirit photography | V&A
Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe you can see the unseen?
The Victorians were obsessed with seances, spiritualism and other creepy ways of contacting and capturing ghosts, including spirit photography – a genre which emerged in the 1840s.
Watch as curators Ruth and Lydia take us through some eerie depictions of ghosts in our print and photography collections, from stories by Charles Dickens, to ghostly apparitions in stereographs, and famous photographs by Lewis Carroll and Cecil Beaton – not to mention the legendary V&A ghost who supposedly haunts the museum in South Kensington…..
00:00 Why were the Victorians obsessed with ghosts?
00:58 Ghosts on Exhibition Road
01:57 Spiritualism, clairvoyant trances and Charles Altamont Doyle
03:42 What is a seance?
05:24 Ghost stories and Charles Dickens
06:57 Fraudsters and ghosts at the theatre – The Davenport Brothers
07:53 Spirit photography and Lewis Carroll
10:06 3D ghosts in stereographs
12:17 Ghosts in the home
13:31 The unconscious and Cecil Beaton's surrealist memento mori
14:44 The legend of the V&A ghost
See objects for yourself in our Prints and Drawings Study Room: https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/study-room...
See more in our photography collection: https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/pho...
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