Ectoplasm Barf

During my wonderful undergraduate years, I was privy to my University's other-worldly collection of Spiritualist photographs. Taken by various 'doctors' and 'scientists' in the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century (but mainly around 1840-1890) during seances, the photographs imaged mediums with weird material excreting from their orifices. This white, stringy stuff was more affectionately known as ectoplasm (ghosts). With the popularity of Spiritualism then increasing, more and more 'rational' minds grew interested in debunking the mediums and their ghosts. In order to do so, prior to each seance, male scientists subjected the women to invasive gynecological exams. Somehow the mediums kept their lil' ghosts a secret and the scientists couldn't disprove that the mediums were really mediums. So in an attempt to lend scientific credence to the seances, these women would let cameras be brought in, BUT with one tiny exception....the ghosts, it was believed, would retreat back into the body when exposed to a flash from a camera (awww they were camera-shy).

Maybe this is the foundation of photoshop, or maybe it's early camera magic, but my interest lied in the similarities between seances and an intimate or sexual experience (the dark room, the hand holding, the moaning, the caressing, bow chica bow woww) and the production of ectoplasm to childbirth...which, I guess sort of suggests that women were still bound to the constructed, and idiotic, notions of femininity (irrationality, intuitiveness, submissiveness) despite seeking autonomy in the movement.