https://www.nfsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-07/Cane%20Toads%20Mega%20Menu%201_1000x745.jpg
Spirit glass slide by Édouard Isidore Buguet
https://www.nfsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/08-2017/1003920_0003_cropped_resized.jpg
Title:
Spirit glass slide by Édouard Isidore Buguet
NFSA ID
1003920
Year
1874
This photograph is by Édouard Isidore Buguet (1840-1901). Buguet was a French medium and spirit photographer who became very famous in the early 1870s.
In 1875, the Parisian police raided his studio and discovered Buguet's photographic plates had pre-exposed images on them that allowed him to make his 'spirit images'. Buguet admitted his photographs were fraudulent and he served a year in gaol.
The magician Harry Houdini claimed the police also discovered figures and dolls heads at Buguet's studio that he used as props to make the pre-exposed images. Despite his confession, many people still believed Buguet's images to be genuine.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.