Since photography's invention in 1839, people have tried to photograph what cannot be seen: ghosts, dreams, prayers, sickness, sin, psychic forces—even the human soul. The images they produced are beautiful, unsettling, and often absurd. The experiments behind them are stranger still. Leading scientists, artists, physicians, and thinkers took these investigations seriously. Yet today this remarkable visual record has been dismissed as a curiosity and largely written out of photography's official history.
What if the strangest photographs ever made are also among the most important?
Camera Miracula: An Uncomfortable History argues that attempts to photograph the invisible reveal something fundamental about photography itself. Photography has never simply recorded reality. It has also functioned as a ritual technology for giving visible form to invisible realities. In this day-long symposium, Emily Hauver, Mark Pilkington, Annebella Pollen, Beth Saunders, and Shannon Taggart return to photography's neglected archive. Through surprising case studies spanning art, science, religion, and the paranormal, they reveal how photography has long imagined, negotiated, and transformed what people and cultures understand to be real. At a moment when AI is reshaping our understanding of photographic truth, the medium's forgotten past may offer insight into its future.
Camera Miracula: An Uncomfortable History.
University of Brighton
Sallis Benney Theatre, Brighton, BN2 0JY
Free to register
Thursday, 3 September 2026, 10:30AM - 6:00PM
Programme and booking https://www.ticketsource.com/centre-for-design-history-university-of-brighton/camera-miracula-an-uncomfortable-history/e-ljdmxz
