Vanessa’s ghostly and deceptive picks
During the early days of photography in the 1820s, long exposure times of several minutes meant photographers struggled to capture people—if they didn’t sit entirely still, the result was ghostly figures in the image. It wasn’t until the late 1830s and early 1840s that technology improved, and exposure times reduced to seconds, allowing people to be satisfactorily recorded by the camera. Still, children and animals were famously difficult to capture as they tend to move—as in this family group photograph.
Photographers took advantage of several techniques to make amusing photographs of ‘ghosts’, ‘spirits’ and ‘demons’.
One of my favourite examples is the Les Diableries series of stereocard photographs—a poignant social criticism of the excesses of bourgeoisie. These are satirical photographs representing scenes of life in hell. They were made by photographing clay models going about their daily life among skeletons and demons with fiery eyes!
These fascinating objects are composed of two photographs inserted between two stereocard board mounts. The photographs were hand-coloured on the back and protected with a layer of tissue paper. The eyes of the demons, skeletons and other decorative details were punctured and retouched with coloured gelatine, making for quite gruesome bright red eyes.
Both amateur and professional photographers also delved into the world of trickery and image manipulation. Some used sophisticated methods of overlapping and retouching negatives to convey fake scenes and imagery. Others used double and even triple exposures to ‘reveal’ the spirits of the deceased, while some used props to prove the existence of fairies.
Ellie’s choice: A ‘Perfect’ Casting—The Significance of Sir Christopher Lee’s Plaster Cast
The nights are drawing in, there’s a chill in the air and as Hallowe’en comes ever closer, horror films are on my mind. Here at the museum we’ve been delving into the Hammer Horror collection, particularly the special effects make-up used in their films, such as The Mummy (1959), Dracula (1958), and The Gorgon (1964). We’ve been looking at a variety of objects including fake blood, gorgon bites and vampire fangs!
So, when I was asked to pick a spooky object for this month’s post, there were many options to choose from—but what could be better than a plaster cast of Sir Christopher Lee’s head, which was used to create spooky makeup looks for one of his films?
The cast is a ‘life mask’, an impression of the actor’s face, used as a tool to test both make-up and prosthetics. Now, almost 70 years later, the cast is still covered with sketches, sculpting marks and what appear to be leftover remnants of modelling material. As well as being a fascinating item to look at in terms of its history with an iconic film production company and a beloved actor, the cast is very interesting from a conservation perspective. This is because these scrapes and pen marks are part of the context of its use—the signs of its life as a working object. Consider different objects that also show this—how the stone steps of historic buildings are gently worn into a curve due to millions of people walking over them.
It might be tempting to remove all the marks and material stuck to the cast so it’s as perfect and fresh as it would have been when it was first cast in the 1950s. But doing so would destroy the significance of why it was produced, and remove historic information about how make-up techniques were planned and produced.
These considerations are some of the factors that conservators have to think about when developing treatment methods, as not all marks are unwanted, and it can be important to leave them there.
So the next time you’re in a museum, take a closer look at the objects on display and see if you can find any sketches, stains or ‘imperfections’ that tell the history of those objects.