Magic and superstition have surrounded photography from the beginning. Because of the way it captured the image, especially of living people, the camera was widely believed to cause death or illness or to steal the soul. Photographs were thought to have supernatural powers, or be amenable to witchcraft. There are many variants of these beliefs, which are often related to those concerning the power of the shadow, the soul, or the status of the dead. The anthropologist and folklorist J. G. Frazer included examples in his compendium The Golden Bough (1911-15), reporting, for instance, a Yankton Dakota man who feared that his spirit might stay with the photograph after his death instead of going to the spirit land.
While many, especially later, reports are probably travellers' tales or reactions to a photographer's intrusion, others reveal unease or even terror in the face of a new technology. In 19th-century Japan it was said that being photographed once reduced one's shadow and a second time shortened one's life. In parts of South America, photography was believed to peel the face, and in China the camera lens was thought to be made of the eye of a dead Chinese baby. The Araucanian people of Chile believed that photographs could be used to bring bad magic upon the subject, while in parts of Papua New Guinea, photographs of people subject to witchcraft are still believed to be especially dangerous.
The camera was itself seen as a magical instrument, and there are many accounts of subjects fleeing.The photographer's disappearance under the black cloth and the inversion of the image on the focusing screen were perceived as dangerous. Even in Western Europe, the uncannily precise reproduction of God's creatures was sometimes seen as the devil's work. Significantly, the word for photography/photographer in many cultures translates as ‘shadow catcher’, ‘soul taker’, or ‘face stealer’.
The magical, mysterious, and quasi-supernatural qualities of photographs reflect their perceived power in society. Instances of both benevolent and malevolent magical properties occur in film and literature, for example the deadly camera in The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), and the magical photograph which speaks and moves, yet is still ‘a photograph’, in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998). All point to the astonishing power sometimes attributed to photography, and the anxiety it has evoked.
— Elizabeth Edwards
Bibliography
- Behrend, H., ‘Photo-Magic: Photography in Practices of Healing and Harming in Kenya and Uganda’,
Journal of Religion in Kenya and Uganda , 32/33 (2003)
