{"id":106305,"date":"2017-01-02T17:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T22:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106305"},"modified":"2016-12-30T13:03:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T18:03:06","slug":"o-death-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/02\/o-death-2\/","title":{"rendered":"O Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/sante-spirit.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-100285\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-100285\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/sante-spirit.png\" alt=\"sante-spirit\" width=\"600\" height=\"897\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/sante-spirit.png 762w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/sante-spirit-201x300.png 201w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/sante-spirit-685x1024.png 685w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Judging by its austere style, this picture might have been taken by a member of the Crewe Circle, a group of British spirit photographers active in the early twentieth century. It could possibly be the work of Ada Emma Deane (1864\u20131957), who was in her late fifties when she first started taking photographs that included the faces of the dead. Her career was tumultuous and brief. Although she apparently managed some two thousand sessions, fame and consequent downfall came to her in 1922, when she photographed the annual Armistice Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in London. The resulting picture shows the scene blanketed by a sea of faces, purportedly those of the war dead, hovering in vapor. The <em>Daily Sketch, <\/em>however, matched many of the faces with those of living athletes, including some as famous as the Senegal-born boxing champion Battling Siki. Despite her insistences and the support of the consistently credulous Arthur Conan Doyle, she became an object of public ridicule and retreated to her suburban faithful, whom she photographed with their \u201cextras\u201d for a few more years before fading into complete obscurity.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/07\/12\/o-death\/\">Read More<\/a>\u00a0&gt;&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spirit photographs never fail to be eerie, if only because of their tawdriness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":999,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26379],"tags":[23197,3965,4846,23204,23196,23201,23200,3161,100,22780,23199,23203,23198,23202],"class_list":["post-106305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2016","tag-ada-emma-deane","tag-arthur-conan-doyle","tag-britain","tag-burnt-over-district","tag-crewe-circle","tag-enrico-imoda","tag-linda-gazzera","tag-photographs","tag-photography","tag-pinakothek","tag-robert-boursnell","tag-second-great-awakening","tag-spirit-photographs","tag-william-mumler"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>O Death: Luc Sante on Spirit Photographs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Spirit photographs never fail to be eerie, if only because of their tawdriness.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/02\/o-death-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"O Death by Lucy Sante\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 2, 2017 \u2013 Spirit photographs never fail to be eerie, if only because of their tawdriness.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/02\/o-death-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-02T22:00:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta 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