Divine Presence in Spain and Western Europe 1500–1960: Visions, Religious Images and Photographs

Connecting with the Absent and the Supernaturals [with Images]

132 Connecting with the Absent and the Supernaturals Composite images, whether by photomontage, multiple exposure, sandwiched negatives, or other techniques , provided other solutions to the depiction of visions.14 Since the earliest days of their craft, photographers had experimented with combinations.15 The postcard trade encouraged the notion of absence combined with fondness, and combining images was a good way to picture the virtual reunion created by the card when sent. The period of 1895 to the end of World War I, which included massive migration and then the separation of soldiers from families, was its heyday (Figs. 75–81). The absence involved could also be the absent dead (Figs. 82–84). Spiritualist photographers from the 1860s on used photomontage to capture the visits of the dead to loved ones (Fig. 85). The combination of images was quickly put to use as a way to simulate visions in which the seer and the seen could be depicted together. As early as 1864, the photographer Dufour experimented with combining a photo of Bernadette kneeling in prayer, taken in a Tarbes studio, with the Lourdes grotto that had a statue of the Virgin she was supposedly seeing, although he had her somewhat off the ground and facing the wrong way.16 (Fig. 86.) 133 The combination of supernaturals and humans, whether through a mixture of photos and art, or with actors combined through multiple exposure or photomontage , or using painted backdrops, or groups of actors in real photos, is a constant in the decade before World War I (Figs. 87–88). Ghosts, spirits and dreams figured in commercial photographs and lantern slide shows by the 1850s, depicted around the living by use of multiple exposure or multiple negatives .17 (Figs. 89–90.) Beings like these, not just the family dead, also turn up in spirit photographs and early twentieth-century commercial postcards (Figs. 91–92). We see angels as guardians, especially with children, and in photo portraits, children dressed as angels (Figs. 93–97). Saint Nicolas/Père Noël appears especially with children; he is a more familiar figure who even poses for the camera and at times looks a lot like grandfather (Figs. 98–101). This last, laïque version gives an inkling of the two world-views in struggle in this period, a struggle reflected in postcards. Apparitions, whether of the Sacred Heart to a nun at Paray-le-Monial, or to the children of La Salette or Bernadette at Lourdes, were for many Catholics signs for France as a nation. At the same time French secularists, followed by their peers in other Southern European nations, were militantly anti-Catholic. In the postcards we thus find 134 allegorical figures for the nation, always a woman, that variously are conceived as Catholic (whether being trussed by Freemasons, or protected by Christ, or blessed by the Pope), semi-Catholic, or completely non-Catholic (Figs. 102–105). A rare anarchist card from 1909, at the death of the Catalan-Spanish educator Francisco Ferrer, presents an entirely different woman, freed from clerical chains, proud of body, with no emblem of national identity (Fig. 106). 135 Fig. 76. Sisters aloft. From Madeleine and Lucienne Bardorell to Mlle Ernestine Doncourt in America, “Bonne et heureuse Année.” France, printed frame, Champigny (Seine), G. Gossens. Fig. 75. “Thought knows no distance.” From woman in Bessan (Hérault) to sister, in Faugères, March 1905. “Tell me if you got the basket...” Nancy, Bergeret. 136 Fig. 77. From woman, in Spanish, “Your friend wishes you a happy saint’s day.” Bought in Barcelona. Berlin, Rotophot 2873/1. 137 Fig. 78. Sent within Budapest from Laci to Tóth Sárika (“Aranyos Pipikém!” [My littile darling!]) April 18, 1912. Vienna, OPG 3411/12. 138 Fig. 79. Written in French from woman to lover. Paris, Rex 475. 139 Fig. 80. “From afar he knows how to thrill me with the caress of a kiss.” Sent with New Year greetings to Mlle. in Vitré, Jan. 3, 1915. Paris, Rex 4639. 140 Fig. 81. “Dream.” Sent from Jeanne to Mlle in Anduze (Gard). “Souhaits sincères: Un gentil mari.” Berlin, Georg Gerlach Co. 1416/2. Fig. 82. Hamburg, Fritz Korf, EFFKA Serie 233, No. 1. Postcard bought from southern Spain. 141 Fig. 83. Written in Portuguese from aunt and uncle to nephew and niece, April...