Photographing the invisible : practical studies in spirit photography, spirit portraiture, and other rare but allied phenomena
James Coates's 1911 London and Chicago study Photographing the invisible is a practical manual on spirit photography, aimed at spiritualists and amateur photographers, with its examples drawn from sittings and studio portraits. The four pictures are grainy halftone portraits in which a faint, translucent second figure or face hovers beside or behind a seated sitter, with soft haloed edges and dark, mottled backgrounds. A designer might take from them the eerie look of double exposure, ghostly overlays, and dim atmospheric portraiture of the early twentieth century.
