The Art of Ectoplasm
Encounters with Winnipeg's Ghost Photographs
Overview
The legacy of the Hamiltons’ psychic archive
In the wake of the First World War and the 1918–19 pandemic, the world was left grappling with a profound sense of loss. It was against this backdrop that a Winnipeg couple, physician T.G. Hamilton and nurse Lillian Hamilton, began their research, documenting and photographing séances they held in their home laboratory. Their extensive study of the survival of human consciousness after death resulted in a stunning collection of hundreds of photographs, including images of tables flying through the air, mediums in trances, and, most curious of all, ectoplasm—a strange, white substance through which ghosts could apparently manifest.
The Art of Ectoplasm invites readers to explore the Hamiltons’ research and photographic evidence which has attracted international attention from scholars and artists alike. Notable figures like Arthur Conan Doyle participated in the Hamilton family’s séances, and their investigations garnered support among the psychical scientific community, including renowned physicist Oliver Lodge, the inventor of wireless telegraphy. In the century since their creation, the Hamilton photographs (now housed at the University of Manitoba) have continued to perplex and inspire as the subject of academic study, comedic parody, and artistic and cinematic renderings.
This fascinating collection reflects on the history and legacy of the startling and uncanny images found in the Hamilton Family archive. As contemporary society continues to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Art of Ectoplasm offers a compelling look at a chapter in social history not entirely unlike our own.
Reviews
“The first dedicated essay collection on a wholly unique and highly significant Canadian psychical research archive. I have no doubt that the volume will inspire a new generation of artists, academics, local historians, and paranormal researchers.”
Christine Ferguson, University of Stirling
“The dialectical relationship articulated in The Art of Ectoplasm between the current COVID-19 pandemic and the Spanish Flu of 1918, so crucial to the Hamiltons’ engagement with spiritualism, is fascinating and makes the book timely indeed.”
Jennifer Fisher, York University
"[These] issues are literally life and death, with art and ideas that explore the strange liminal spaces between the material and immaterial [and] call up the ghosts that haunt us now."
Alison Gillmor, Border Crossings
"This collection offers fascinating photos from [the Hamilton Family Fonds] as well as a range of essays about the meetings, notes and images from the encounters and ruminations on the ways in which the work continues to capture the imagination today."
Ben Sigurdson, Winnipeg Free Press
"Whether Hamilton's work is evidence of ghosts, documents intangible phenomena, or illuminates a society grappling with loss, is ultimately up to the reader to determine. But one thing is clear: a century later, these photos still have the power to fascinate."
David Jón Fuller, Prairie Books NOW
"With a collection as rich as the Hamilton Family Fonds, the question becomes what kind of impact did these images have on the world over the last 100 years? This question is explored in the new book The Art of Ectoplasm: Encounters with Winnipeg’s Ghost Photographs [which] examines and contextualizes the influence and impact Hamilton’s ectoplasmic images have had and continue to have on the world."
Kitty Wong, Winnipeg Free Press
"Published on large-format paper, the book itself is a work of art… For anyone interested in the Hamilton séances from an artistic, historical or psychical research perspective, it is worth going beyond the amazing photos and reading the text."
Janice Hamilton, Writing Up the Ancestors
"The Art of Ectoplasm [is] an elaborate and startling new book of essays, pictures, and art inspired by the Hamiltons’ collection of seance photographs and by contemporary art."
Tom Jokinen, Literary Review of Canada
"I am blown away by [The Art of Ectoplasm]. It really is a book for the hands and eyes. The colour print quality is superb and the photographs of the archives and artworks have reproduced so beautifully. The index is fabulous and the detail of all the references and chapter notes is something to behold."
Susan MacWilliam, artist and lecturer in Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin
About the Author
Other contributors: KC Adams, Brian Hubner, Esyllt W. Jones, Murray Leeder, Walter Meyer zu Erpen, Katie Oates, Shelley Sweeney
Table of Contents
Introduction: Science and Sentiment in the Hamilton Family Fonds
Ch 1: Ghostly Pandemics: Speaking to the Dead in the Hamilton Family
Ch 2: Experiments and Experiences in Psychical Research: Scientific Séances in Winnipeg
Ch 3: Seeing and Feeling, Science and Religion: Negotiating Binaries in Lillian Hamilton’s Photographic Albums
Ch 4: The Cast of Characters Defending the T.G. Hamilton Family Psychical Research Legacy
Ch 5: Life after Death: New Uses of the Hamilton Family Fonds
Ch 6: “Weird Winnipeg”: Or How the Hamilton Family Fonds Helped to Make Winnipeg an Unlikely Centre of the Paranormal
Ch 7: “Mere Symbolic Ectoplasm”: The Ectoplasmic Screen
Ch 8: Journey to the Spirit Realm
Ch 9: Embodying the Dead: The Science and Art of Ectoplasm
Appendix: Hamilton Family Publications
