Photographs today are simulations, amalgams of effects and filters, whereas in the mechanical age (1840s–1960s) people tended to believe photographs were trace records, evidence—an indexical copy of something that was once in front of the camera. In other words, photographs were a disembodied specter. When looking at Charles Traub s photographs, we come to recognize the subject’s direct and causal connection is not to the camera but to the photographer’s eye.