Apparitions and Divine Signs in photography

[Stephen Frizza]

Has anyone here missed something in composing a shot only to process the film, produce a print then realize an uncanny resemblance to a ghostly figure? or religious icon? Some time ago here in sydney there was post in an ocean side fence which made a shadow in the shape of the virgin mary...religious followers from all round sydney went to see it until a vandal destroyed it.

Just for some fun what have you not seen until the print has emerged?

[Steve Smith]

It's usually the other way round. I think I have some fantastic images until I print them.


Steve.

[Michal Kolosowski]

Last winter I thought I saw a rough image of Virgin Marry on a frosted window. Unfortunately since I only had a d*****l camera I didn't photographed it afraid of committing some sort of profanation.

[jnanian]

i didn't get a religious icon,
but the day jerry garcia died
i saw him in my coffee ...

[TheFlyingCamera]

No apparitions, but in 2004, I got a pair of animal crackers stuck together at the buttocks; appropriately, one was an elephant, and one was a donkey. I should have put it up on Ebay.

[Moopheus]

Originally Posted by Stephen Frizza

Some time ago here in sydney there was post in an ocean side fence which made a shadow in the shape of the virgin mary...religious followers from all round sydney went to see it until a vandal destroyed it.

Don't sweat it. Nobody knows what Mary really looked like, so that shadow could have been anyone!

[Ross Chambers]

A couple of years ago there was a show at one of those hidden little galleries at the University of Sydney of modern images replicating the ones which were all the rage during the Victorian age of seances. There have been a couple of recent books published on the subject recently. They don't pretend that there was any authenticity to the photographs.

Apparently one practitioner of the art had the subject clutch the film holder -- loaded with the pre-exposed sheet of the "spirit" -- closely and think of the missing loved one before exposing the film again with the bereaved in portrait pose. All a bit cruel really, but interesting social history.

One of the recent books also shows "ectoplasm" being produced by a medium from a rather intimate part of her anatomy.

I imagine that there was a concurrent link between the developing magic art of photography and the "magic" of spiritualism of the time.

Regards - Ross

[Maris]

The phenomenon is para-eidolia or pareidolia. There does not seem to be a consistent spelling.

The basis is though to be the inclination of the human brain to find and remember patterns in nature. Classic examples include people reporting animal shapes in clouds or finding the face of Jesus etched on a half burnt taco.

An intriguing conjecture is that para-eidolia is the exact opposite of seeing. A pattern that exists in the brain is projected onto the world via the lens of the "minds-eye". Another aspect is the tendency of people to see what they expect to see. Think of those honest earnest astronomers who saw the Martian canals, the canals they though were there lurking always at the edge of visibility.

Photography, in its original sense of sensitive surfaces absorbing samples of subject matter, is a powerful anodyne to the tendency of the brain to make thought visible. One could philosophise about astronomers capturing digital images of Mars, finding no certain canals, and PhotoShopping until the darn things were visible even to amateurs.