The legacy of the Hamiltons’ psychic archive

In the wake of the First World War and the 1918–19 pandemic, the world was left grappling with a profound sense of loss. It was against this backdrop that a Winnipeg couple, physician T.G. Hamilton and nurse Lillian Hamilton, began their research, documenting and photographing séances they held in their home laboratory. Their extensive study of the survival of human consciousness after death resulted in a stunning collection of hundreds of photographs, including images of tables flying through the air, mediums in trances, and, most curious of all, ectoplasm—a strange, white substance through which ghosts could apparently manifest.

The Art of Ectoplasm invites readers to explore the Hamiltons’ research and photographic evidence which has attracted international attention from scholars and artists alike. Notable figures like Arthur Conan Doyle participated in the Hamilton family’s séances, and their investigations garnered support among the psychical scientific community, including renowned physicist Oliver Lodge, the inventor of wireless telegraphy. In the century since their creation, the Hamilton photographs (now housed at the University of Manitoba) have continued to perplex and inspire as the subject of academic study, comedic parody, and artistic and cinematic renderings.

This fascinating collection reflects on the history and legacy of the startling and uncanny images found in the Hamilton Family archive. As contemporary society continues to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Art of Ectoplasm offers a compelling look at a chapter in social history not entirely unlike our own.

Serena Keshavjee grew up in Kenya and Toronto and now lives in Winnipeg, where she teaches modern art and architecture at the University of Winnipeg. Her academic research focuses on the intersection of art and science in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Serena Keshavjee's profile page

• Winner, Manitoba Day Award, Association of Manitoba Archives

"Serena Keshavjee weaves both scientific and artistic theory into a remarkable visual history, situating the Hamilton photographs within Modernist art and taking us from James Tissot and Auguste Rodin to Guy Maddin and current artists such as Teresa Burrows and Erika DeFreitas, whose work has been inspired in part by the Hamilton photographs. These varied and fascinating discussions take as their starting point a single archival fonds."

Archivaria

"The contributors to Serena Keshavjee’s edited volume have done a service not only in extending our knowledge of séance art phenomena but in further stimulating art historians to re-imagine the artistic structure and function of the spiritualist séance."

Art History

"Published on large-format paper, the book itself is a work of art… For anyone interested in the Hamilton séances from an artistic, historical or psychical research perspective, it is worth going beyond the amazing photos and reading the text."

Writing Up the Ancestors

"[These] issues are literally life and death, with art and ideas that explore the strange liminal spaces between the material and immaterial [and] call up the ghosts that haunt us now."

Border Crossings

"The Art of Ectoplasm [is] an elaborate and startling new book of essays, pictures, and art inspired by the Hamiltons’ collection of seance photographs and by contemporary art."

Literary Review of Canada

"Keshavjee’s central insightful chapter reviews how Dr Hamilton put the scientific method into the service of his religious beliefs in his attempts to prove the existence of powerful psychic forces and paranormal phenomena... [Hamilton's] work resonates anew in a digital era that complicates the relationship of the medium (whether spiritual or photographic) to truth."

Journal of Curatorial Studies

"With a collection as rich as the Hamilton Family Fonds, the question becomes what kind of impact did these images have on the world over the last 100 years? This question is explored in the new book The Art of Ectoplasm: Encounters with Winnipeg’s Ghost Photographs [which] examines and contextualizes the influence and impact Hamilton’s ectoplasmic images have had and continue to have on the world."

Winnipeg Free Press

"Whether Hamilton's work is evidence of ghosts, documents intangible phenomena, or illuminates a society grappling with loss, is ultimately up to the reader to determine. But one thing is clear: a century later, these photos still have the power to fascinate."

Prairie Books NOW

"This collection offers fascinating photos from [the Hamilton Family Fonds] as well as a range of essays about the meetings, notes and images from the encounters and ruminations on the ways in which the work continues to capture the imagination today."

Winnipeg Free Press