viz.

For my first viz. post ever, I thought I’d take a look at the Victorian phenomenon of spirit photography.  Truly timely, right?  But in the wake of Errol Morris’s new book on photography, Believing is Seeing, which is concerned with sussing out the relationship between objective truth and the photograph, thinking about this mid-Victorian malarkey suddenly seems more culturally relevant to me than it did, say, a week ago.  After all, the controversy over spirit photographs represents the first serious sustained debate about photography’s truth-telling powers.   But more importantly, spirit photography remains, if you’ll pardon the obvious pun, visually haunting: at its most basic rhetorical level, its wish-fulfilling nature provides access to powerful cultural fantasies.   Read more after the break.

Image Credit:  Winifred Casson, Accident, (ca. 1935)

via the Harry Ransom Center

The university's own Harry Ransom Center has been getting a lot of press lately. Although much of the attention involves the opening of the David Foster Wallace archive, many are talking about the center's new exhibit.