The Apparitionists: Photography, Death, and the Spiritualist Movement

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Response to Apparitionists
What does Manseau suggest was the relationship between photography and death?
The greatest change that art and technology of photography have brought is bridging the chasm brought by death (Maseau 17). In other words, for a long time before the advent of photography, the dead were only held in memory, and death, in itself, was never captured and stored in the same manner photography allowed. Therefore, by bridging the chasm, photography helped to remove the stigma and fear around the dead. According to Maseau, photography depicted death in ways that reframed the terror of oblivion for the limited understanding of the living.
What was the spiritualist movement, and why were people drawn to it?
Due to the limited understanding of death by the living, the spiritualist movement provided the ‘only’ explanation that people could rely on in solving the mysteries around death since there was no other possible explanation. In essence, the spiritualist movement was based on the idea that spirits of the dead exist and poss...