Spectres

Conflict, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm.

Earth Spirit, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 42cm.

Question, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm.

 Confrontation, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm.

Fire Spirit, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 42cm.

Despair, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm. 

Spectres is a self-portraiture series that is deeply personal, yet simultaneously speaks to the ghosts within us all. The images elicit the unstable senses of self that I – we – grapple with daily. Using spirit photographs of my doppelgängers, Spectres explores inner turmoil, conflict, mediation and despair. Pared back to the metaphysics of first principles, this psychologically-driven work questions the coherence of identity.

The exploration is underpinned by a range of concepts and practices from philosophy and photography. The fundamental concept is Derrida’s notion of hauntology, which uses the figure of the ghost to contest the stability of ontology, the metaphysical understanding of being, existence and reality. In French, hauntologie and ontologie are homophones, and Derrida thus uses the uncertainty of speech and language – the media for telling stories about ourselves – to unsettle our certainty of selfhood and our sense of being-in-the-world.

Ontology – our being, selfhood and identity – is not fixed but volatile. Our sense of self is haunted, evinced by the figure of the ghost. The ghost deconstructs presence/absence, past/future and here/there. Instead of a stable sense of self, we are haunted by past selves, which are also future visions of ourselves. Past and future selves collide in the present. When the absent erupts within the present, selfhood is fractured, identity deferred, and uncertainty begets turmoil and despair.

In Spectres, this metaphysics is examined through concepts and practices used in past and contemporary photography. The series combines spirit and doppelgänger photography to explore the inner conflicts of multiple selves. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, spirit photographers attempted to capture the spectral world, though their ghost-images were fraudulent. This does not mean our own ghosts are false, and I use spirit photography to convey the experience of fractured selves. Practitioners such as William Mumler (US, 1832-1884) and William Hope (UK, 1863-1933) used multiple exposures to render ghosts. Spectres uses double-exposure to expose my own ghosts.

In doing so, the series also draws on doppelgänger photography to enliven the interactions between my fractured selves. The doppelgänger is a ‘double walker’, the ghostly double of a living person, often seen as a harbinger of bad luck and an omen of death. Cornelia Hediger’s (US, b. Switzerland 1967) self-portraiture series, Doppelgänger and Doppelgänger II, explore her doppelgänger’s affects on self. Through meticulous self-choreography, she builds ensembles of doppelgängers to examine alter egos and split personalities. Which figure is the doppelgänger? They are all Hediger: she is her ghostly double. 

Spectres joins Hediger’s careful composition with double-exposure. Some images convey my doppelgängers as translucent, ghostly figures melting into the landscape; others render them opaque, tangible and capable of physical contact. The ‘black-curtained’ portraits are internally-focused and self-probing; the landscape images suggest openness and possibility. The aim is to speculate on my changing perceptions of my own fractured selves. If I accept that selfhood is fractured and deferred, then my selves’ perceptions of each other also move in and out of focus. Spectres explores the shifting conflicts, conciliations and despondency within me – and within you.

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Selected Bibliography 

Cannilla, Giuseppe, Paolo Musu and Stella Sanctacaterina (1989) Ghost Photography: Illusion of the Visible (Mystfest, Milano).

Dawson, Alec (2014) http://www.alecdawson.net/ (accessed 20 May 2014).

Derrida, Jacques (1994) Spectres of Marx (Routledge, New York).

Hediger, Cornelia  (2012) http://corneliahediger.com/index.html (accessed 15 April 2014).

Levy, Adam Harrison (2010) The puzzle of the self: Cornelia Hediger’s doppelgängers, Photo Technique, March/April, 23-28.

Wojcik, Daniel (2009) Spirits, apparitions, and traditions of supernatural photography, Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation 25 (1-2): 109-136.

Installation photograph, COFA, D Block, 16 June 2014.