Item Details

Singley, Benneville Lloyd [photographer].

[Spirit / Angel Photography] "Her Guardian Angel" stereograph photograph.

Meadville, Pennsylvania: Keystone View Company, 1898. Later Printing. Alongside the carte-de-visite craze, another fad developed in the late 1850s and 1860s: the stereograph. Two nearly identical views were made from slightly different positions or by two side-by-side lenses of a single camera; glued to a single mount and viewed in a stereoscope to simulate binocular vision, the two images combine in the mind to create a startling illusion of three-dimensionality.

Spirit photography is a type of photography whose primary attempt is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities, especially in ghost hunting and has a strong history dating back to the late 19th century.

First used by William H. Mumler in the 1860s, after discovering the technique by accident. He saw a second person in a photograph he took of himself, which he found was actually a double exposure. The mid-19th century saw a market for this type of photography by taking people's pictures and doctoring the negatives to add lost loved ones into them (mostly using other photographs as basis or staging scenes).
The Keystone View Company was a major distributor of stereographic images, and was located in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Part of the "Angel series," this set depicts child asleep in bed with a spectral outline of an angel overlooking them. Very Good+. In excellent condition. Single silver gelatin photographic prints mounted on one card designed and cut to fit stereo viewer windows. Each image: 7.9 × 7.5 cm (3 1/8 × 3 in.); Card: 8.8 × 17.8 cm (3 1/2 × 7 1/16 in.). Text on verso. Item #13983

Price: $40.00