Photographer - Alexander Martin
Description- Denver Musician, Arnold A. Durson with Spirits
Type of Photograph - Gelatin Silver Print (mounted to Grey Board by the photographer)
Size - 6 ½ x 9 inches
Dated on Reverse in Pencil - March 20th, 1920
Location - Denver, Colorado
Provenance - From the spirit photography archive of Wilbur E. Tolbert, Founder of Spiritualist Science Church and Camp (Walsh, Colorado)
Condition - Very Good. It has been professionally cleaned by a photography conservator
Alexander Martin was a Colorado based photographer best known for being featured in Harry Houdini’s book A Magician Among The Spirits, after being recommended to him by Arthur Conan Doyle, who owned a few of his pieces and praised them as being the best spirit photographs he had ever seen. His work within the genre was largely lost until recently.
As with the vast majority of Martin’s spirit photographs, the image presented here is the only known copy to have ever existed.
The sitter is Arnold A. Durson, who was a Denver-based musician and music teacher, that curiously appears in the same place in the composition of at least 60 examples of Martin’s spirit photographs. Durson, also became the sitter in many of Martin’s daughter, Anna Larimer’s privately created spirit photos. Due to Durson’s eerie reappearance throughout the families seance images, along with cryptic descriptions written on the reverse of certain photographs, such as “Durson’s visions of spirit hell”, it appears that the family believed that Durson possessed rare psychic abilities and was an essential collaborator in their creation of mediumistic artwork that channel the otherworldly.
Unique to much of Martin’s work, the spirits were arranged as a double exposure photograph on the same glass negative of a drawing rather than a photograph taken from life. Most likely, it was drawn by Martin himself, for he initially began as a painter, before having a successful career as a photographer of the Colorado landscape and the awkward pseudo-classical, folk-art depiction of spirits reappears in much of Martin’s works. His occult pictures were only made during the final 18 years of his life, and their creation was more of a personal obsession than his scenic photography.
Note - ELDRITCH OCULUM watermark is NOT on the actual photograph
Photographer - Alexander Martin
Description- Denver Musician, Arnold A. Durson with Spirits
Type of Photograph - Gelatin Silver Print (mounted to Grey Board by the photographer)
Size - 6 ½ x 9 inches
Dated on Reverse in Pencil - March 20th, 1920
Location - Denver, Colorado
Provenance - From the spirit photography archive of Wilbur E. Tolbert, Founder of Spiritualist Science Church and Camp (Walsh, Colorado)
Condition - Very Good. It has been professionally cleaned by a photography conservator
Alexander Martin was a Colorado based photographer best known for being featured in Harry Houdini’s book A Magician Among The Spirits, after being recommended to him by Arthur Conan Doyle, who owned a few of his pieces and praised them as being the best spirit photographs he had ever seen. His work within the genre was largely lost until recently.
As with the vast majority of Martin’s spirit photographs, the image presented here is the only known copy to have ever existed.
The sitter is Arnold A. Durson, who was a Denver-based musician and music teacher, that curiously appears in the same place in the composition of at least 60 examples of Martin’s spirit photographs. Durson, also became the sitter in many of Martin’s daughter, Anna Larimer’s privately created spirit photos. Due to Durson’s eerie reappearance throughout the families seance images, along with cryptic descriptions written on the reverse of certain photographs, such as “Durson’s visions of spirit hell”, it appears that the family believed that Durson possessed rare psychic abilities and was an essential collaborator in their creation of mediumistic artwork that channel the otherworldly.
Unique to much of Martin’s work, the spirits were arranged as a double exposure photograph on the same glass negative of a drawing rather than a photograph taken from life. Most likely, it was drawn by Martin himself, for he initially began as a painter, before having a successful career as a photographer of the Colorado landscape and the awkward pseudo-classical, folk-art depiction of spirits reappears in much of Martin’s works. His occult pictures were only made during the final 18 years of his life, and their creation was more of a personal obsession than his scenic photography.
Note - ELDRITCH OCULUM watermark is NOT on the actual photograph
