Mirror games: the double in trick photography from the early 20th century

Abstract

This article, which is dedicated to portraits produced in the early 20th century using trick photography and to the historical and ontological relationship between photography and mirrors, is based on the assumption that it is necessary to think about the history of photography in an integrated manner, framing it in the broader context of media history and of more general theoretical questions such as the relationship between human beings and technology, the mediation between reality and imagination, and the interactions between the so-called “new” and “old” media. Mirrors and photography are means related, on the one hand, to pre-cinematographic shows and to the cinema itself, and on the other hand, to scientific devices, such as the telescope and microscope, which deserve to be rethought in terms of their mutual ambivalence. Configuring an “absolutely unreal” and “absolutely real” space, as suggested by the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1984/2005, p. 246), mirrors, like photography, became a paradigmatic example of a heterotopic space. In the history of photography and, in particular, of portraits using trick photography produced in the early decades of the 20th century, there was a marked use of mirrors and doubles, as devices able to present the disruption of human figure. We are referring to double portraits, photo-multigraphs and photography using distorting mirrors (Bergeret & Drouin, 1893; Chaplot, 1904; Hopkins, 1897; Schnauss, 1890/1891; Woodbury, 1896/1905). Starting from a predisposition to rethink about the tradition of fantasy and trick photography in the general context of media history, we propose to retrace affinities between two “heterotopic” spaces – photography and mirrors.