Fotograf Magazine

Imagine a room bathed in red light, multiple cameras flashing simultaneously, a naked female body, a scientist whose fingers are sticky with vaginal fluids and, at the center of it all, “living” matter – strands, veils and masses of it extruding from the orifices of the medium and then flowing, creeping, jumping and even morphing into objects, organs and images. We are in the very thick of materialization, a space where science, spiritualism and eroticism are uncomfortably exposed to each other by the gaze of the photographic camera. More precisely, we are in the early 20^th century “psychic laboratory” of Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862–1929), German psychologist and famous psychical researcher, in the midst of a scientific experiment devoted to the study of “teleplastic structures” produced by the medium Eva Carrière (pseudonym of Marthe Béraud) under the guidance of her companion and mentor Juliette Bisson.