“Mourning and the Uncanny” -- my most recent series of war artifacts -- is about grieving and how spirit photography, inspired by Civil War death, expressed the deep desire, inherent in most portraiture – to oppose the inexorable loss of memory.
Consider the diptych in this series and the pencil inscription found in the young Federal soldier’s tintype case:
“Dear Sister Eliza, Keep this until I cease to be remembered. If we never meet again, I will not entirely be forgotten. Charlie.”
And witness the pallid Lydia Caldwell Pennock, a poet who died at twenty-seven of “consumption” on her wedding day, whose portrait and story outlived her.
Many of the bereft sought evidence of an afterlife through “spirit photographs” which, by darkroom accident or by design, seemed to hold a shadow of the deceased. Early daguerreotypes were called “mirrors with a memory” which might also reveal what otherwise remained unseen. No wonder “ambrotype” comes from the ancient Greek for “immortal.” I seek to represent that yearning.
I modify 1860’s portraits, blurring a face (as if caught turning), and enhancing natural image degradation to evoke time and the uncanny – the intimation that death may not be absolute, either as some liminal self or as not yet forgotten life. Then I print 24”x30” transparencies, which I mount on plexiglass – large “ambrotypes” that cast shadows on the wall behind, further evocative of spectral life.
Consider how mourners 160 years ago may have found comfort in uncanny “proof” of an afterlife. Such artifacts and modern renderings are part of the historical language of grief.