The somnambulists : photographic portraits from before photography

書誌事項

The somnambulists : photographic portraits from before photography

photographs by Joanna Kane ; essays by Duncan Forbes, Roberta McGrath

Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2008

  • : hbk

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注記

"The somnambulist are contemporary portraits of life and death masks from the cast collection of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society". -- back cover

"Published in association with National Galleries of Scotland". -- prelim

Includes bibliographical references

収録内容

  • Hieroglyphic heads, by Duncan Forbes, Roberta McGrath

内容説明・目次

内容説明

The life or death mask is in many ways the sculptural analogue of the photographic portrait. Both suggest direct traces from life, involve positive and negative, and evoke a mysterious connection between a living, breathing subject and a captured image. The drive to capture true likenesses in the early 19th century was partly generated by the pseudo- science of phrenology. As a by-product of this, cast collections such as those of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, have preserved haunting likenesses via life and death masks from individuals living 150 to over 200 years ago.Through her photographs Joanna Kane has taken these subjects out of the categories and hierarchies of their phrenological context. They no longer appear as disembodied scientific specimens, but as photographically embodied portraits of individual men and women - many of whom lived before the invention or popular use of photography. The title, "The Somnambulists", is a reference to mesmerism and phreno-mesmerism, which were current at the time from which many of the casts originate from. The resulting portraits appear to exist in an ambiguous suspended state between life, death and sleep.

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