Sale 2466 - Icons & Images: Photographs & Photobooks, February 15, 2018

249 c   (EUROPEAN ROAD TRIP) A meticulously compiled album containing approximately 413 artfully made photographs by a single photographer documenting a lengthy trip throughout Europe, bravely undertaken in an early automobile. With photographs highlighting every aspect of the trip, from roads traveled, local people encountered, and beautiful classical architecture, to the natural awe-inspiring spectacles and wooded picnic location choices. Silver prints, many panoramic in format, measuring 2 3 / 4 x3 3 / 4 to 2 3 / 4 x7 1 / 2 inches (7x9.5 to 7x19.1 cm.), mounted recto/verso to grey pages, each with detailed captions, in ink, identifying the location, and in some cases, the distance traveled. Oblong 4to, cloth-covered boards, with a gilt-stamped title on the spine. 1911 [1,000/1,500] 250 c   (SPIRITUALISM—FALCONER BROTHERS) Group of 12 photographs of séances and spirits surrounded by cloudy halos of ectoplasm. Includes participants with spirits appearing above their heads, ethereal women in angel-like clouds of ecotoplasm, and children. Silver prints, the images measuring 4x3 inches (10.2x7.6 cm.), and slightly smaller, and the reverse, more than half with sheets slightly larger, three with a credit, in the negative, and two with notations (one reading “Taken on Christmas Day at the Psychic Centre”), in ink, on verso. 1930s [2,000/3,000] Craig and George Falconer conducted séances in which spectators were not only invited to watch a medium at work, but also to participate in the photographic process (loading film, shooting pictures, processing prints) and recording the visitation of a spirit. The brothers specialized in ectoplasm portraits, which showed white clouds of supernatural energy produced when the departed appeared (with the help of mediums). The pair was arrested and convicted in 1931 when two plainclothes policemen, who were posing as sitters, charged that “extras” (spirits) were actually photomechanical images and that the cloudy ectoplasmwas manipulated. But, the brothers returned to photography and seemed to have profited from their trade through the rest of the decade. 249