Live Breaking News & Updates on Photographic Amusements

Tortured by their relentless work ethic, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary define an
amusement as an idle, time-wasting diversion or entertainment. When the term was applied to the practice of trick photography in the late nineteenth century, the trend’s supporters were quick to point out that “photographic amusements” were not just entertaining but also educational. Making a photograph of a ghost or creating a self-portrait inside a glass bottle taught novices about accidental double exposures. Photographers learned the medium by pushing it to its limits.
Despite its educative potential, the genre was largely disavowed by the photographic establishment, as well as later histories of the medium. In their bid for respectability, nineteenth-century photographic commentators leaned heavily on the medium’s association with truth and objectivity. They staked photography’s fortune on faithful likenesses and accurate documentation. That trick pictures, such ....

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