Overview

Named one of one of Time’s best photobooks of 2019, this portrait of spiritualist communities across the US and Europe is now redesigned with additional archival images American photographer Shannon Taggart’s fascination with spiritualism, the belief in deceased individuals’ ability to communicate with the living, began during her adolescence when a medium revealed additional information about the circumstances of Taggart’s grandfather’s death. A decade later, Taggart, then a practicing photojournalist, found herself obsessively drawn to Lily Dale, New York—the world’s largest spiritualist community. Her transformative experiences there catalyzed an 18-year odyssey documenting spiritualist communities throughout the world in search of “ectoplasm”—an emanation exorcised from the body of the medium, believed to be both spiritual and material. Named one of Time’s best photobooks of 2019, and now revisited by Atelier Éditions, Séance offers readers a remarkable series of supernatural photographs exploring spiritualist practices and beliefs within communities found across the US, the UK and Europe. The photos are accompanied by Taggart’s commentary on her experiences, a foreword by Dan Aykroyd, creator of the Ghostbusters franchise and fourth-generation spiritualist, and illustrated essays by Andreas Fischer and Tony Oursler. Atelier Éditions’ reissue also features new commentary by writer and filmmaker J.F. Martel, additional archival images and a new design. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Shannon Taggart (born 1975) has contributed to Time, Newsweek, New York Times Magazine, Discover, New York, Wall Street Journal and Reader’s Digest. Her first monograph, Séance (Fulgur Press), was published in 2019. She is currently working on an illustrated book about the Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT), one of the most exotic cases within the history of psychical research.

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9781954957015

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Shannon Taggart, a photographer whose passion for documenting Spiritualist rituals began in Lily Dale, has spent nearly two decades capturing the practices by which mediums (and their curious customers) attempt to reach those beyond the veil.-- Paris Review A photographer's 18-year quest to uncover Spiritualism's radical feminist history.--Sara Rosen Document Journal Seance illuminates the objects that are integral to spiritualist practices. Cutlery, radios and handkerchiefs are among the strange assortment of household items harnessed to bridge the gap between living and dead. By experimenting with chiaroscuro and exposure, Taggart casts these objects in an otherworldly light, haunting the viewer with a sense of the uncanny.--Madeleine Pollard Financial Times Shannon Taggart's book Seance presents images from within contemporary Spiritualist communities that most of us are totally unaware of, offering an eerie but sometimes very sweet portrait of a religion that is shrouded in darkness.--Emily Gosling Elephant Taggart's captivating photos and their captions are each enthralling in their own right, but made all the more powerful thanks to the rich essays and historical information that precede them. This book is a marvel.--Maika Haute Macabre Taggart's photos...are beautiful, tender, and frequently eerie, as images of wonder and faith, hovering at the threshold of invisible worlds, should be.--Alex Jovanovich Bookforum The photographs in Seance are often most resonant when they slip furthest from photography's ties to proof. At the heart of the book are Taggart's portraits of individuals, alone and in community, seeking to make connections to the unseen.--Rebecca Bengal New York Times: T Magazine

In her exciting quest to capture the invisible, Ms Taggart achieved surprising results. Her search for the ectoplasm – a substance believed to be both spiritual and material - lead her to explore not only the tricks of the trade and its neglected photographic history, but also its lesser-known links to science, prominent historical and intellectual figures, and the women's rights movement. * BBC: News * Throughout ""Séance,"" Taggart's images, along with extensive interviews with Spiritualists, occupy a liminal space between truth and perception. But for Taggart, the complexity is the point. -- Jacqui Palumbo * CNN: Style * Shannon Taggart points to the fact that photography, like Spiritualism, is a liminal process and has a very complicated relationship with truth. -- Sara Rosen * Blind * Taggart’s images are rife with mystery. There’s a poetic bent to them as well. Looking at the images throws you into this unique world. -- Kenneth Dickerman * Washington Post *

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