"Instead, I went off to the most extraordinary show in Paris, "The Third Eye: Photography and the Occult" at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (through February 6). With more than 300 small photos, many from the late 19th century and nearly all patently fraudulent, the show is about the power of illusion and the compulsion of belief. Spirit photos, each purporting to capture the ghostly presence of a departed loved one hovering beside the living, throng the exhibition's opening galleries with wraiths—disembodied heads, transparent figures, angelic children, hands raised in blessing, a vaporous dog—and their anxious, deluded companions. Far more alarming (and more than a little hilarious) are pictures of mediums who, when not levitating furniture, could manifest thoughts and dreams as spurts of fluid or ectoplasmic macramé. No matter how hokey, the images curator Pierre Apraxine has gathered here (many of which will travel to the Metropolitan Museum, where "The Third Eye" opens next September 27) have the dreamy, disturbing allure of the most compelling surrealist concoctions. These photographs don't just subvert realism, they feed off and fuck with it, offering a view through the looking glass to a world where hallucinations look as real as, say, grain silos."
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- bill 12-02-2004 10:02 pm