The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory

Title: The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory

Author: Oana Mateescu

How to cite this article: Mateescu, Oana. 2015. The Medium of the ”ody: Photography and the Senses in the

Psychic Laboratory. Martor 20: 13-24. Published by: Editura MARTOR (MARTOR Publishing House), Muzeul Ţăranului Român (The

Museum of the Romanian Peasant)

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The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory

Oana Mateescu Lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Bucharest

ABSTRACT KEYwORDS his essay discusses the experiments carried out between 1909-1913 by German ectoplasm photography, indexicality, psychologist and psychical researcher Albert von Schrenck-Notzing on the phe- body, medium, psychical science nomena of materialization, involving the biological shapes and images excreted by the body of a female subject (in this case, Eva Carrière) who acted, at the same time, as a spiritual and technological medium. It underlines the indexicality of visual and tactile evidence as it is graphically and photographically recorded by the scientist. In the psychic laboratory, science is deeply anchored in the physiology of the female body, embracing animism and vitalism as a philosophy of life, while also veering close to eroticism as a somatic mode of knowledge.

magine a room bathed in red light, Phenomena of Materialization: A Con- multiple cameras lashing simul- tribution to the Investigation of Mediumistic Itaneously, a naked, writhing female Teleplastics (Schrenck-Notzing 1923, body, a scientist whose ingers are sticky henceforth PM), the work that records with vaginal luids and, at the center of it four years (1909-1913) of such experiments all, the “living” matter – strands, veils and with physical materialization, is the kind masses of it extruding from the oriices of of document that actively encourages the the medium and then lowing, creeping, suspension of disbelief. How this is achieved jumping and even morphing into objects, – by means of which sensory, graphic and organs and images. We are in the very photographic modalities – is a question that thick of materialization, a space where brings to the forefront a genre of visual and science, spiritualism and eroticism are tactile evidence grounded in indexicality. It uncomfortably exposed to one other by also forces attention to the self-relexivity of the gaze of the photographic camera. photography as a technology of embodiment More precisely, we are in the early 20th that strives to grat materiality (of bodies century “psychic laboratory” of Baron and biological life) onto immateriality (of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862- spirits and the unconscious). 1929), a German psychologist and famous Photography itself has always wavered psychical researcher, who is in the midst between iconicity and indexicality as of a scientiic experiment devoted to the discursive claims to the truth. Used here study of “teleplastic structures” produced in their Peircean sense (see also below) by the medium Eva Carrière (pseudonym as relations of resemblance, respectively of Marthe Béraud) under the guidance of causality and contiguity between signs Madame Juliette Bisson, her companion and the objects they represent, iconicity and mentor. and indexicality cover an interpretive

13 Oana Mateescu continuum that takes photographs from a plethora of forces, energies, vibrations, images to proofs. It is the latter sense that waves and rays. Late 19th-century discoveries was central to Schrenck-Notzing’s psychical – electromagnetic waves (1888), X-rays research – not only because phenomena of (1895), uranium radioactive emissions materialization had been so oten exposed (1897), wireless waves (1899), N-rays as hoaxes (and were, thus, in dire need of (1903) – turned matter itself into “a kind scientiic redemption), but also because of of phantasm” (Tifany 2000, 169), severing the eminently intimate (and, thus, causal the links between materiality, visibility and and indexical) link between the medium’s transmission. New iconographies of matter female body and the mysterious substance allowed the visualization of previously it externalized and shaped into animate inscrutable and imponderable phenomena: forms. just as the microscope had generated debates about degrees of sub-visibility and invisibility (Wilson 1995), radiography and, ...... of course, photography reinforced each other in the creation of a pictorial physics From Spirits to Animate Matter of degrees of materiality (Wilder 2011; Smajic 2010). he physics of this intangible “he medium is not only the unconscious matter – persuasively illustrated by Oliver producer of phantasms, but is the physiological Lodge’s “etherial bodies” (Raia 2007), source of material for making them visible.” William Crookes’ “radiant matter” or (PM, 282) Cromwell Varley’s “electrical spiritualism” (Noakes 2008) – allowed the mind to By late 19th century, and particularly escape the physical conines of the brain ater 1882, when the international Society and to propagate as vibrations of diferent for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded frequencies into the ether. Telepathy, in in London, a sizable group of scientists particular, carried over the vocabulary of and philosophers were busily displacing brain-waves and cerebral radiation into spiritualism from the realm of religion and a “photographic model of consciousness” superstition into that of science and natural (Enns 2013, 182). Radiating brain waves law. SPR members – philosophers and could be recorded by thought-photography, psychologists (F.H. Myers, Henri Bergson, a practice that even did away with the William James), physicists (William camera and the lens: thoughts as visual Crookes, William F. Barrett, Oliver Lodge), impressions could be directly imprinted physiologists and biologists (Charles onto sensitive photographic plates and Richet, Hans Driesch) – were all engaged in emulsions. (Technological) Media replaced trespassing boundaries. his was a ground- (spiritual) mediums. breaking work that entailed the creation Undoubtedly, new communication of new vocabularies and instruments, technologies – telegraphy in particular (Otis the imposition of laboratory standards 2001, 180-219) – did much to promote this onto the séance and the elaboration of fantasy of a dematerialized, instantaneous lexible theoretical frameworks that and apparently unmediated community could accommodate phenomena such as of thought. Indeed, the new psychical hypnotism, ectoplasmic materialization, science relied extensively on the parasitical telepathy or telekinesis (hurschwell 2001; relationship that modern spiritualism had Wolfram 2009). already established with technology. As he new relationship between the Kittler (1987, 111; see also Gunning 2007) psychical and the physical was made argues, it was the emergence of media plausible by the redeinition of matter as such as photography that promptly called

14 The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory

But animism was a decidedly slippery concept. Made famous by anthropologist Edward Tylor (1871) as a form of primitive thought that mixed up spirit and matter 1) This particular argu- (spirit is not the monopoly of humans, but ment in no way detracts from the potential of resides also in animals, plants or objects), spiritualism as a reser- animism was pejoratively understood as a voir of religious experi- ence. On the contrary, cultural survival and evolutionary remnant despite the Protestant of bygone times2. German animists emphasis on meaning and inner belief at the sidestepped this recent semantic baggage expense of form and performance, religion – and traced the concept back to its original then and now – thrives usage by 18th-century chemist and vitalist upon mediation. Communication with philosopher G. E. Stahl. In this sense, divinity or the spiritual animism came to denote opposition to both realm is enhanced by the participation of spiritualist and scientiic materialist camps, technology: if photography, audio-cassettes and, particularly so, by its association to or video-films generate various neo-vitalist and holistic theories belief, it is not as a state of mind, but as of life popular in German physiology and a material practice, biology before World War II (Normandin relationship and even Fig. 1. Flashlight photograph by the autor, 7 June, 1911 social interaction with and Wolfe 2013). Schrenck-Notzing was a invisible others (Blanes th and Santo 2014; Meyer forth the spirits of the dead in the mid-19 deinite supporter of animism and his work 2009) century1: in PM provided copious material for the “…the tapping specters of the spiritualistic articulation of vitalist biologies. Teleplasm 2) Interestingly enough, Tylor would have pre- séances with their messages from the realm was proof of an “impossible corporeality” ferred to use the term spiritualism instead of the dead, appeared quite promptly at (Gomel 2007) that hovered on the edges of of animism, but was the moment of the invention of the Morse visibility and materiality and yet teemed rather dismayed by his few experiences with alphabet in 1837. Promptly, photographic with biological life. spirit séances in Lon- plates – even and especially with the camera don (Stocking 1971). Modern spiritualism shutter closed – provided images of ghosts Before it was attached by Schrenck- proved too contro- versial from a social or specters which, in their black and white Notzing to all the other tele-phenomena evolutionary point of fuzziness, only emphasized the moments (telepathy, telekinesis etc.), teleplasm was view to frame a study of of resemblance. Finally one of the ten uses more popularly known under the moniker primitive religion. Edison predicted… for the recently invented “ectoplasm”. “Ectoplasm” was coined in the phonograph was to preserve the ‘last words of early 1890s by Charles Richet, physiologist the dying’.” and future Nobel-prize winner for medicine. While observing the materializations In early 20th-century Germany – when produced by an Italian female medium, Schrenck-Notzing performed his expe- Richet noticed they resembled “sarcoidic riments with Eva Carrière – the ambiguous extensions emanating from the body of a relationship between religion and science medium, precisely as a pseudopod from took the form of a conlict between an amoeboid cell” (cited in Brain 2013, “spiritism” and “animism” (Wolfram 115). He wasted no time in identifying this 2012). Spiritists insisted upon the validity substance as the primordial protoplasm of supernatural interpretations – spirit excreted from within the medium’s body. photographs and materializations are Thus, “ectoplasm” became living cell matter messages from the other world – while (protoplasm) that mediums emanated and animists attributed the existence of psychic molded into various shapes via psychic phenomena to newly-discovered properties energy. This was a fortuitous scientiic of the mind, speciically, the unconscious. explanation for the otherwise mysterious

15 Oana Mateescu

(and often suspicious) biological processes. The animated matter substance that provided of teleplasm is capable of independent so much of the glamour movement, it responds to touch, light and of materialization sound, it organizes itself into forms, images séances. Moreover, and living organs and leaves behind cellular by establishing a link detritus that can be conveniently analyzed – however formally under the microscope. It reproduces itself, tenuous – between “placenta-like”, as it emerges from Eva’s ectoplasm and body in the process of “mediumistic labor” protoplasm, Richet (PM, 250). Its instability, incredible range made it possible for of movement and metamorphic nature are the newly-hatched an almost insurmountable challenge to psychic science to scientiic recording.

Fig. 2. First weld itself to (and, thereby, legitimize itself flashlight as) contemporary biological discourse. photograph Protoplasm – made famous by Thomas by the autor, ...... 21 August, 1911 Huxley as “the physical basis of all life” (cited in Brain 2009, 94) – was at the center Seeing and Recording: of vigorous debates about the nature of Photographic Proofs evolution and heredity, and, more relevantly for psychic research, it provided the vehicle “Better even than dynamometers, balances for the teleological vital force that directed and metronomes is the photographic camera, the organization of organic matter. The since it gives positive proofs in the real sense of profuse and creative conigurations takenthe word.” (PM, 12) by ectoplasm during séances appeared almost as custom made proofs for the claims More than any other scientiic made by early 20th century vitalist biology instrument, the photographic camera about the existence of an ineffable vital produces “objective registration” (PM, energy that differentiated between living 22). In PM, psychical science is utterly and and non-living entities. Dubbed “entelechy” sometimes even shamefully dependent by German embryologist Hans Driesch, on photographic evidence. he human this vital impulse residing in protoplasm senses (vision especially) are unreliable, approached sentient intelligence and memory can be retroactively falsiied and evidenced extraordinary plasticity. Driesch, the assumption of hallucination (not to in particular, was instrumental in bringing mention outright fraud) is a constant and psychic materializations into the sphere particular danger of the psychical ield. of vitalist biology; indeed, for him these Inevitably, scientiic registration must be phenomena were but an externalization rendered independent of the human actor of the body’s vital forces, a “supernormal and “transferred to the physical apparatus” 3) For the continuing relevance of Driesch’s embryology” (cited in Wolffram 2003, (PM, 21). By this account, Schrenck- vitalism to the current 156)3. In this sense, psychic materializations Notzing subscribed wholeheartedly ontological turn in social science, see were converted into scientiic arguments for to a robust notion of “mechanical Bennett 2010, 62-81. a vitalist theory of life. objectivity”: the role of the camera is not to supply verisimilitude, but to guarantee Both Richet and Driesch were frequent nonintervention by eliminating human guests to the séances organized by Schrenck- agency (Daston and Galison 1992, 120). Notzing and their inluence resonates By the end of his four years of experiments throughout the constant analogies drawn with the phenomena of materialization, in PM between ectoplasm / teleplasm and he had seven to nine cameras (including

16 The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory stereoscopic ones) mounted in diferent are both acts and objects of observation, positions of the laboratory and even in the both experiments and the evidence of “dark cabinet” where Eva retreated to do experiments. Indeed, the copious talk her “psycho-dynamic” work. Experimental of scientiic experimentation in PM is conditions required photography to provide ultimately reduced to the creation of ubiquitous and simultaneous mechanical conditions for the photographic exposure visions: “from various points of view, from of teleplasm, the ixation and analysis of various distances, from diferent sides and this leeting evidence. his is, however, 4) Hence the need for red light in the in diferent sizes” (PM, 120). Moreover, this a diicult process constantly beset by laboratory as well as was a mobile technology that ensured the failure. Since teleplastic phenomena are for the dark cabinet 4 where they, much like séance room could be redesigned as an ad highly sensitive to white light , the lash photographs, are devel- hoc laboratory wherever Eva and her mentor of the camera erases them in the very oped by the body of the female medium. travelled (be it Paris, Biarritz or Munich). process of recording. The photographic Each new location is graphically mapped in preservation of evidence is synonymous diagrams that show not just the arrangement here with its destruction, emphasizing yet of the photographic assemblage (cameras again the fragile, impermanent materiality and magnesium lash-light apparatus), of the phenomenon (see also Schoonover but also the position of each piece of 2003, 38). The lash acts as a “painful furniture, human observer, source of light disturbance”, a “sudden blow” on the (chandeliers, red light torches), window and medium (PM, 329), causing the teleplasm door. his was a set-up that emphasized the to be suddenly reabsorbed into her body. recent improvements in exposure times and The undeniable violence exercised by shutter and lash technologies: the camera the photographic lash – reminiscent of became a dynamic instrument that could the cataleptic immobilities produced by capture the lightning-fast movements lash-light in Charcot’s photography of of teleplasm, too rapid to be otherwise hysterical subjects at Salpêtrière (Baer accessible to human sight. 1994; Didi-Huberman 2003) – brings again As others (Schoonover 2003; Harvey to the forefront the corporeal and implicitly, 2007) pointed out, ectoplasm photography indexical nature of photographs. In a case of had very little in common with traditional indexical involution, photography acts back, spirit photography: instead of static recursively, on the very phenomena which tableaux where human subjects are just as caused it to come into being. Teleplasm rigidly posed as their spirit companions, (and / or the medium discharging it) seems we have the contorted and spasming to react to, cooperate with (PM, 130), bodies of mediums in the very process of obstruct (PM, 225) and even anticipate the biological excretion. Moreover, the camera camera: “Even if the cameras are focused was no longer a supernatural medium that on a particular point, the objects, during mysteriously produced spirit images, but a their short exposure and rapid motion, are mechanical and oten clinical eyewitness often photographed at another place” (PM, that recorded the traces of unusual matter 262). Unsurprisingly, this agentive behavior in motion. Photography provided positive creates expectations of sentience: Schrenck- proof in an indexical rather than iconic Notzing describes teleplasm in terms of sense: “solid materializations stood in the “intention”, “independent movement” and same relation to spirit photography as did “creative force”. In more ways than one, the prostitute to pornography – reality the scientiic object of the teleplasm is an replaced representation” (Harvey 2007, 82). artifact of the photographic encounter. Indexicality underlines the psychical And yet, the photographic nature of the scientist’s fascination with the process of teleplasm doesn’t ensure visual legibility. photographic recording itself: photographs Schrenck-Notzing is constantly frustrated

17 Oana Mateescu by “imperfect” and “feeble” photographic unprejudiced, sober and scientiic) is allied results which are too fuzzy to yield to measurements, recordings, classiications judgment by themselves (PM, 71; 85; 90). and forms of visualization other than he nature of the teleplastic phenomenon – photography (micrographs, radiographs whether it is a living form, a white material and even drawings). he visual legibility or an actual organ – “cannot be determined of photography is produced only as the from the photograph” (PM, 71). Indexicality efect of this exegetical labor: “seeing is guarantees reality (the photograph is caused work” (Amann and Knorr Cetina 1990, 90). by the light relected from the object it he empty indexicality of the photograph represents), but ofers no knowledge by and is substantiated by constant graphic in itself. “he index asserts nothing” (Peirce consummation, emerging as the climax of 1992, 226); it is a singular and contingent the clinical graphic method, the inal link instance of deixis (the word “this” or the in a chain of inscriptions. inger pointing to “this”) that has meaning only in a context of speech or action. As a “hollowed-out sign” (Doane 2006, 133), ...... void of recognizable content, the index requires further inferential operations. Touch: The Ontology of the Flesh Alternatively, it might be argued, as Didi- Huberman (1984, 68) does for the stain on “During the touch which she herself made the shroud of Turin, that it is opaqueness – with my inger, she gave a strong and painful the very lack of iconicity and iguration – shudder and trembled violently.” (PM, 55) that makes the index such a powerful proof of existence. Figuration would only serve to he double nature of the index – put into doubt the authenticity of the sign. scientiic trace of the materiality of the Of course, this also means indexicality teleplasm and erotic point of contact can be deliberately exploited to produce with the feminine body that produces credibility. Harvey (2007, 90) hypothesizes it – threatens to collapse the objectivity that the obviously fraudulent appearance assembled in the process of recording. “I of spirit photographs was intentional: “in requested to be touched” (PM, 64), “she order to make a fake look real, it was made asked me to examine her” (PM, 84) – this is to look really fake.” the tactile dance performed by scientist and medium. For Schrenck-Notzing, touch is In PM, indexicality is given cogni- irrefutable conirmation of the materiality tive value by means of the mutual of the visible: its shape, texture or plasticity. conirmation and corroboration between He emphasizes the detective and not the “optical impressions”, “observations” sensuous dimension of tactility in a series of and photographs. Human perception is rich organic analogies: the teleplasm is like constantly checked against observation touching “the dark skin of a mushroom,” which is itself brought to the photographic “the skin of a living reptile,” a “spider’s court of appeal: “the photograph is the web” or even “the amputated stump of a inal link in the chain of observations” child’s arm.” “he living substance” is cool, (PM, 71). What goes on in the psychical smooth, sticky, moist and, alternatively, laboratory is not mere seeing or looking: irm and sot. he optical and haptical are it is “optical induction” (Amann and irremediably entangled in this visceral Knorr Cetina 1990, 100), visual operations knowledge. his is not simply a matter of carried out through the constant graphic equivalence and mutual reinforcement recording of observation. Observation between the optical and haptical systems (uninterrupted, exact, detailed, methodical, of perception (Gibson 1966, 134), but of

18 The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory actual reversibility between the actions of (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 139). The relation seeing and touching. More than anyone, of tactility is Eva’s most powerful way of Merleau-Ponty (1968, 134) articulated this guiding and sometimes even controlling the relationship as a condition of the lived body: experimental set-up – she asserts herself “We must habituate ourselves to think that as a subject by “corporeal intentionality”, every visible is cut out in the tangible, every touching the experimenter’s hands as tactile being in some manner promised to they touch her own teleplastic extensions, visibility, and that there is encroachment, her body achieving relexivity by proxy. infringement, not only between the touched Tactile reversibility slips into experimental and the touching, but also between the reversibility: the objects of study – “digging tangible and the visible...” their nails into the skin of our hands” (PM, If vision is an eminently passive sense 278) – grab hold of the scientist, playfully, (Schrenck-Notzing does not see or look, he but also violently, exploring his skin and his only receives optical impressions), touch body. more than makes up by the scientist’s active Schrenck-Notzing ends up converting exploration and hands-on participation in his body into a recording instrument, the experiment. Touch is a local sense that registering photographic evidence on his requires proximate bodily contact, ingers own skin: in the process of mediation, the roaming and sometimes digging deep into teleplasm, just as photographic emulsion the lesh of the medium. Schrenck-Notzing (Jolly 2002), adheres to his ingers. It is does not hold back from any kind of probing, not just his skin that becomes a tactile ield regardless of how invasive or sexually open to the exploration of the teleplasm. contaminated it may be. In the interest In a singular and spectacular instance, he of establishing accurate experimental himself, as an experimenting subject, turns controls, he administers emetics, clothes the into a relective surface for the sentience medium in a special suit and performs oral, residing within teleplastic membranes. vaginal and anal examinations before and This happens, very appropriately, on the sometimes even during or ater the séance. only occasion that Eva materializes a word His ingers are as familiar with graphic rather than a shape or image. The word is notation as they are with skin indentation: “mirror”. 5) From the skeptic’s they travel over tongue, breasts, thighs and point of view, the mys- the vaginal epithelium, touching, gripping terious substance could and squeezing; just like teleplasm, they are be nothing other than ...... muslin, gauze, paper, constantly moist and sticky with bodily rolled photographs or even animal organs luids. Le Miroir (liver, lungs, intestines) concealed in the me- If during the irst two years of expe- dium’s bodily orifices riments, Eva seems to shrink away from “You are her mirror. She sees herself here.” prior to the séance. tactile probing, later she invites it and (PM, 214) 6) Schrenck-Notzing’s sometimes even demands it, while posing background in the treatment of “sexual th completely naked despite the wishes of her On the sitting of 27 November 1912, deviations” (Sommer 2009) ensured his lady mentor (PM, 160; 198). Whether these Eva materializes a lat object, coiled around lack of squeamish- are forms of “erotic misdirection” (Delgado her head. Upon examination of one of the ness about the erotic undercurrents 2011) initiated by the medium to distract photographs taken that day, Schrenck- of teleplastic phenom- from the fraudulent production of tele- Notzing distinguishes the letters “le” and ena. Materialization is 5 explicitly portrayed as plasm or performances of sexual surrender “miro” within the creases of the teleplastic sexual intercourse: the 6 first stages are associ- intrinsic to materialization is immaterial surface. He recognizes the word “le miroir”, ated with excitement, to the role they play in establishing inter- but is unable to interpret the “curious result”. groaning and trembling th which culminate in subjectivity between scientist and subject he next sitting of 29 November, Eva “release”. by means of an “ontology of the lesh”produces just speech, instead of materializing

19 Oana Mateescu

matter. Under the usual hypnosis at the photograph itself. hus, the main thrust of beginning of the sitting, she assumes the the additions to the English edition of PM is a alter-ego of “Berthe” and talks directly to forensic demonstration of the photographic the baron, pre-empting his own interpretive impossibility of fraud. Schrenck-Notzing work by the simple utterance of the word basically called upon photography to “mirror”. Eva / Berthe elaborates: “She exonerate itself: he reconstructed the (Berthe) wanted to write to you the other day. photographic conditions of the 1912 She wanted to send you her written thought. sittings using title-pages from that year’s You are her mirror. She sees herself here. You issues of Le Miroir, marshalling the expert have a photograph of the thought of Berthe. testimonies of four witnesses – professional She has the joy of creating another image for photographers and photo-chemists – who herself” (PM, 214). independently conirmed the minute, but multiple, diferences between the his particular photograph spurred an original teleplastic photograph and the entire controversy upon the publication of simulations based on actual journal pages. PM in 1914. French journalists seized it as He went even further, theorizing (in a work convincing proof of Eva’s deception and remarkably and apparently deliberately Schrenck-Notzing’s naïve belief: though free of hypothesis and explanation) that barely visible in the photograph, the printed any resemblances between the teleplastic word looked very much like the title-page of phenomenon and the Miroir graphics and the French journal Le Miroir (presumably photographs were due to “the cryptomnesic hidden inside Eva’s body before the sitting). function of memory” under hypnosis (PM, his, in turn, put into doubt many of the other 306). Eva’s visual reminiscences could images materialized by Eva. he teleplastic unconsciously contaminate the ideoplastic faces interpreted by Schrenck-Notzing as creations because her abnormal memory evidence of “ideoplastics” – a familiar picture was analogous to “the sharp deinition of a language used by the unknown psychic photographic plate” (PM, 305). force behind teleplasm in order to make Fig. 3. Mme. Bisson's itself intelligible (PM, 269) – were revealed If Eva’s memory was akin to a flashlight photograph of as photographs of famous igures from the photographic plate, her body was “an 19 January, 1913 very same journal (among others, president exceedingly delicate reagent” (PM, 22) Woodrow Wilson). producing teleplastic representations via (see ig. 3) bio-mechanical replication. Developed in the darkroom of the cabinet, the teleplastic Schrenck-Notzing images involuntarily shaped from was thoroughly in- within the body’s protoplasm were oten censed by these indistinguishable from photographs and accusations and just as sensitive to light. As Gunning (1995, retaliated with a 58) perceptively notes, the medium “became massive evidentiary a sort of camera, her spiritual negativity campaign. His bodying forth a positive image, as the human primary object was body behaves like an uncanny photomat, not to defend his own dispensing images from its oriices.” his experimental con- transformation of female physiology trols, Eva’s honesty or into a photographic mechanism is, in her mentor’s moral many ways, the culmination of the afair standing; these were between spiritualism and communication all secondary to technologies (Brain 2013; Schoonover 2003; the integrity of the Warner 2003). But if Eva’s body is a kind

20 The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory of camera, Schrenck-Notzing’s own visual legibility is provided by Eva / Berthe’s own records are really mechanical photographs voice directly interpellating her observer of organic photographs – a form of recursive and claiming him as a mirror, a surface to “remediation” (Bolter and Grusin 2000) see and inscribe herself upon. For a moment, that begs the question of agency. Who is she reframes the materialization process as recording whom? an intersubjective relationship of mutual recognition. he medium (photography It’s precisely this question that comes to and Eva) is erased from the process of light in the Le Miroir photograph. Schrenck- mediation; we are let with the alterity of Notzing’s impassioned defense of this the mysterious Berthe. And, of course, the image cannot be limited to its unique status erotic knowledge of two interlocked gazes as evidence of graphic materialization (PM, and two bodies touching each other. 262); the word becomes lesh, so to speak. Its

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