The Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures (SSSP) was a short-lived psychical organization that formed in 1918 to investigate claims of
spirit photography
Spirit photography (also called ghost photography) is a type of photography whose primary goal is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual Non-physical entity, entities, especially in ghost hunting. It dates back to the late 19th century. ...
. It was established as a rival to the
Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...
.
History
The first President of the SSSP was physician Abraham Wallace. Henry Blackwell,
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...
and W. G. Mitchell were Vice-Presidents.
["The Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures"](_blank)
Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology.["Photos of Ghosts: The Burden of Believing the Unbelievable"](_blank)
Skeptical Inquirer.
According to photographer Martyn Jolly, "The SPR successfully exposed as frauds several spirit photographers supported by the SSSP." One of these was the photographer
William Hope.
Members of the SSSP such as Arthur Conan Doyle and honorary secretary Fred Barlow stated that the photographs of the
Cottingley Fairies were genuine. In May, 1920 the organization reported that they had obtained evidence for
paranormally produced photographs under test conditions. This opinion was rejected by other psychical researchers and in 1923 the organization dissolved.
Barlow was originally supportive of spirit photography but later reversed his opinion. In 1933 he co-authored a paper in the ''Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research'' that cast doubt on the subject and demonstrated fraudulent methods that William Hope and other photographers had utilized.
Barlow's collection of spirit photographs was given to
Eric Dingwall
Eric John Dingwall (1890–1986) was a British anthropologist, psychical researcher and librarian.
Biography
Born in British Ceylon, Dingwall moved to England where he was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge (M.A., 1912), and the Unive ...
who annotated them for the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
. In 1960, he commented that the collection was evidence of "human stupidity, credulity and superstition".
[Jolly, Martyn. (2006). ''Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography''. Miegunyah Press. p. 8. ]
See also
*
Abstract photography
Abstract photography, sometimes called non-objective, experimental or conceptual photography, is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world and that has been created through the use of p ...
*
Spirit photography
Spirit photography (also called ghost photography) is a type of photography whose primary goal is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual Non-physical entity, entities, especially in ghost hunting. It dates back to the late 19th century. ...
References
Further reading
*Fred Barlow; W. Rampling-Rose. (1933)
''Report of an Investigation into Spirit Photography'' Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 41: 121-138.
*Martyn Jolly. (2006). ''Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography''. Miegunyah Press.
{{Parapsychology
1918 establishments in England
Arthur Conan Doyle
Paranormal organizations
Spiritualism