The New York Times Book Review - Errol Morris
In The Apparitionists, Peter Manseau takes us on an expedition through the beginnings of photography and its deceptions…Manseau has created an exceptional story of how photography intersects with the hope that some heretofore unexplored scientific process will reveal something about the nature of man and our limitations. It is one of the persistent myths of mankind that death isn't final—that photography, which transcends time and space, can show a way around death.
From the Publisher
Praise for The Apparitionists A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of 2017 "In The Apparitionists, Peter Manseau takes us on an expedition through the beginnings of photography and its deceptions... Manseau has created an exceptional story of how photography intersects with the hope that some heretofore unexplored scientific process will reveal something about the nature of man and our limitations."—Errol Morris, The New York Times Book Review "A sensitive, insightful history."—The New Yorker "Mr. Manseau develops these threads so that The Apparitionists itself is like a photograph—each successive chapter adding depth and shade and specks of mystery, until the final result magically appears, provoking as many questions as it provides answers."—Wall Street Journal “Given that the path loops through the Civil War, the telegraph, P.T. Barnum, spiritualism and a trained seal, it's impressive that The Apparitionists is as brisk a read as it is. The tone is knowledgeable, but the touch is light; technology is deftly explained, figures who have been gone too long are always briefly reintroduced, and Manseau is happy to reassure you you're reading a history. (Of two warring photographers, he notes that, unfortunately, ‘Mortal partnerships are always only temporary.’)”—NPR "The Apparitionists is breezy, clever, and exuberant."—Harper’s Magazine "Wide-ranging and thought-provoking... In our age of digital manipulation, it is more important than ever to scrutinize every photograph, whether or not they contain ghosts."—San Francisco Chronicle “Written like a novel but researched with academic rigor, this account of a photographer whose work seemed to incorporate images from the spirit realm stops short of either endorsing the veracity of the photographer's claim or debunking his work as a scam...A well-paced nonfiction work that reads more like a historical novel than an academic study..” —Kirkus “In this meticulously researched study of America’s dalliance with spiritualism in the 19th century...Manseau provides comprehensive context for his chronicle of Mumler, placing him at the intersection of the Spiritualist movement and the rise of the photographic art, and in the context of the Civil War, which acquainted Americans with death on an unprecedented scale.—Publishers Weekly, starred review “More than just a fraud, William Mumler was a pioneer in the new art of photography—a striking technology that not only offered new levels of immediacy but also immediately offered itself up to manipulation, provoking questions of authenticity even as its uncanny effects offered a tantalizing vision of the unknown. He was a huckster, but like all successful hucksters, he was a perfect reflection of his time. Peter Manseau's The Apparitionists recreates Mumler's life with a scholar's poise and a storyteller's grace, offering an enduring portrait of the nineteenth century through one of its most unlikely figures.” —Colin Dickey, author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places “Manseau has become the foremost chronicler of the deep American desire to believe in the weird, the strange, and oddly wonderful. His l —
Kirkus Reviews
2017-08-07
The tale of a provocative controversy and court trial from the formative era of photography.Written like a novel but researched with academic rigor, this account of a photographer whose work seemed to incorporate images from the spirit realm stops short of either endorsing the veracity of the photographer's claim or debunking his work as a scam. What Manseau (One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History, 2015), the curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian, demonstrates is that William Mumler (1832-1884) was perhaps as mystified as his skeptics in his emergence as a "spirit photographer" whose photographs of a living subject might show a deceased relation hovering somewhere in the print. Court transcripts show that Mumler's subjects mostly believed in the legitimacy of the apparitions in his work and that none of the photographers who attempted to expose his trickery were able to do so. Yet the narrative is less an argument in favor of a miracle than an evocation of an era "shaped by war, belief, new technology, and a longing for connections across ever greater distances—a time not unlike our own." It was a time when the telegraph offered instantaneous communication across oceans and "transformed nearly every aspect of American life, and perhaps none more so than the press." It was also a time when electricity demonstrated the very real power of things unseen. If communication could become instantaneous across thousands of miles, why couldn't the emerging field of photography close the distance between the living and the dead? For this was also an era, even before the Civil War, when the country "was suffering a spiritual hangover," in which spiritualism and mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead were perceived as a threat to conventional Christianity. Thus the trial not only focused on the possibilities and limits of the emerging photographic technology, but on whether it was possible to reconcile such apparitions with the Bible. A well-paced nonfiction work that reads more like a historical novel than an academic study.
