In today’s smartphone world, the “Selfie” and the “Wefie.” In America of the 1860s, spirit photography.
In his book The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln’s Ghost (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 335 pages), writer Peter Manseau takes the reader on an expedition through the beginning of photography and its deceptions, in an America so overcome with loss and death during the Civil War that many of its people turned to spirit photography hoping to be united with their deceased loves ones in perpetuity.
(http://josecarilloforum.com/imgs/Apparitionists_cover-1B.png) (http://josecarilloforum.com/imgs/Abraham-Lincoln-1C.png) (http://josecarilloforum.com/imgs/Mary_with-Lincoln's-ghost-1A.png)
PETER MANSEAU’S BOOK; ABRAHAM LINCOLN FOR REELECTION; PHOTO
OF MARY LINCOLN WITH ABRAHAM'S “GHOST”
Writer-filmmaker Errol Morris, reviewing the book for the October 29, 2017 issue of The New York Times, says “The Apparitionists is a primer on cultural crosscurrents in mid-19th-century America, focusing on the religious movement of spiritualism and on ‘spirit photography’.” In the book, Manseau chronicles the sensational court trial for trickery and fraud of William H. Mumler, a pioneering spirit photographer who took some of the most compelling 1860s spirit photographs, the subjects of which swore that they contained images of their late beloved.
Read about Errol Morris' review of Peter Manseau’s The Apparitionists in the online The New York Times now! (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/books/review/apparitionists-peter-manseau-william-mumler-biography.html?smid=fb-share)