I Don’t Pretend to Have the Answers: Rik Garrett and Kirlian Photography

Originally from Washington state, artist and educator Rik Garrett has developed an approach to photography that utilizes alternative processes developed and used to capture esoteric subjects.

From a technique supposed to have measured the “auras” of a living being to that used by a priest who claimed to have photographed the crucifixion, Garrett explores how historic approaches can capture their own life.

Shannon Taggart

What first drew you to experiment with photography and the invisible?

Rik Garrett

I’d been practicing photography from a young age. My mom was a photographer. I got my first camera at the age of 6, and I started using the darkroom when I was 14. I loved the medium but always felt as though I wanted to capture something more ambiguous. 

I read an article on spirit photography and ectoplasm by Marina Warner in Cabinet Magazine in 2003. I was fascinated with the incredible séance photographs of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing. I’d been interested in metaphysical subjects from the time I was young, so learning the ways that my two interests were connected was a serious revelation.

A couple of years later I got the book The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult. From that point forward, I was hooked. I loved seeing all the examples of different approaches to photographing the invisible: spirit photographs, thought photographs, etc. It felt as though I’d found what I’d been looking for.

When my wife and I got together, I started examining different aspects of my life: my sense of self, where I lived, and what it means to be connected to another person. That’s when I started working on Subtle Bodies in earnest. I was using these historical techniques of photographing the invisible to examine my life.

ST

I love your full-body Kirlian photographs. Did you build a device to create those? Can you explain how the technique works?

RG

I started by building my own device; I think I found plans in an older magazine. I modified the use of the device to make some of my early Kirlian-related works, including the first full-body images. After struggling with this process for a bit, I ended up purchasing a vintage Violet Wand device and using that for the full-body images. It was a bit easier to handle, and I was happier with the results.

The process is quite involved! I purchase traditional color photographic paper in large rolls. I will trim off a piece approximately 10 feet long and lay it over a person, all in complete darkness. An electrical current is applied, either with the homemade Kirlian device or the Violet Wand, to the reverse of the paper. This results in a mild shock to the subject. After the entire body has been exposed in this manner, I take the paper and process it in large troughs of chemistry. 

ST

I once interviewed Dennis Stillings, a researcher of electricity and founding curator of the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis. He told me that, in his opinion, Kirlian photography doesn’t attest to a mechanistic feature of the world, but certain individuals can get interesting results. What is your opinion of the Kirlian process?

RG

Like a lot of these subjects, my feelings on this change over time. I believe there are truths to be revealed, but I don’t always feel that it’s as direct or scientific as some proponents may believe. That’s why I work in a fine art context. I experiment, I see the results, but I don’t pretend to have the answers. I document elements of myself, my life, my marriage. Personally, I vacillate on whether they show objective truths to be diagnosed, or whether we as viewers just attribute meaning. Either way, I see my work as an entry way to examine elements of life—our sense of self, the ways that we interact with each other.

I think of how Gary Schneider had the project Genetic Self Portrait, examining the self by looking at microscopic fragments. Instead of enlarging images of retinas and gut flora, I’m attempting to photograph the auras and other invisible qualities, drawing on the alternative photographic history that deals with esoteric subjects.

ST

Your series Subtle Bodies features new variations of old techniques once used in experiments to photograph the unseen. I am familiar with this history, but some of your processes are new to me. What is a Chronovisor time camera? What is Walter John Kilner’s method of aura visualization?

RG

That’s what I love about this field—there are so many avenues to explore!

The Chronovisor was a device supposedly created by Father Pellegrino Ernetti, a Benedictine priest. Ernetti said the device allowed him to view and photograph events from the past—including the crucifixion of Christ.

My first attempt at building a Chronovisor was a bit crude; it was essentially a box that connected to an analog film camera. I used this to document the neighborhood I lived in, scenes from my life, and the location where supposed witches were executed in Salem. The original Chronovisor, rumored to be hidden away in the Vatican archives, was said to work almost like a television that could be tuned to a particular date. I’ve found additional plans of Ernetti’s and have considered revisiting that project.

Walter John Kilner was a British medical professional in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1911 he published The Human Atmosphere, in which he discussed his efforts to view the human aura using glass “screens” filled with a chemical called dicyanin, basically like filters that we might use in photography now. He believed that someone could use these filters to train themselves to see auras, to the point that eventually they would not need to use the filters any longer. 

To explore this idea using photography, I created my own screens filled with dyed liquid. This was deliberately archaic; it’s very easy now to buy glass or even plastic photography filters. Approaching Kilner’s research now, as a photographer in the 21st century, it seems surprising that Kilner didn’t push the idea of using the screens in photography. That missing link, pushing things one step further, that’s where things get fun for me.

ST

Your series Jaroslawis described as “an attempt at spirit photography as a means of contacting a departed friend.” Can you tell me more about this body of work?

RG

Jaroslaw Studencki was a friend of mine. He was a talented photographer. We went to college together, watched bad movies together, and worked together.

In 2015, Jaroslaw died at the age of 27. It was a real shock, because he had seemed so vibrant. As I was working on the Subtle Bodies series, and because Jaroslaw was a photographer, it seemed appropriate to attempt to make contact by using photographic media. 

Jaroslaw was irreverent, and I thought that some of the more somber techniques of the past would not make sense. I remembered the thought photography of Masuaki Kiyota, a young psychic who gained a lot of attention in Japan by creating images without a camera on Polaroid film. I’d heard that he had later confessed to faking some of the images by placing the pack of instant film in the microwave.

This may have been a rumor I’d heard – I don’t know that he actually used a microwave at all.  His images don’t give that impression. But this rumor triggered an idea for me.  This type of trickster activity seemed more in line with my friend. Not only was Jaroslaw decidedly unserious, but I’d had several experiences where he’d used microwaves incorrectly. He often burnt popcorn in microwaves while we watched movies, and at one point he put photo paper in a school microwave “to see what would happen,” nearly causing a fire.

I came up with a little ceremony and put a pack of instant film in the microwave, asking Jaroslaw to make an appearance. I had no idea whether anything would show up on the film. When I opened the images, I was surprised to see what appeared to be two large eyes.

It should be noted that Jaroslaw wore very thick glasses. Maybe it was just pareidolia [the human ability to see shapes or make pictures out of randomness], but at the time, while I was grieving, it gave me a sense of what sitters must have felt when they visited William Mumler and received spirit photographs of their departed friends and family.

ST

What are some of your favorite moments from the history of spirit or psychic photography?

RG

This is a difficult question to answer! I love the almost romantic ectoplasm photographs of Schrenck-Notzing. And the spirit photographs of Ada Emma Deane are so delightfully unusual.

But I have a soft spot in my heart for the photographs of the spirit Katie King from the early 1870s. A teenaged girl named Florence Cook was known to materialize the spirit of a pirate’s daughter. This was examined and attested to by the scientist Sir William Crookes. These were some of the first full-form physical spirit manifestations, and resulted in very early photographs of materialized spirits.

Since 2019, I’ve been working on a project examining the Katie King phenomenon. It started as an idea for a book, then it morphed into an art installation. After some recent work, it has become a book again. The subject has been examined already, but after a bit of digging I’ve found that the entire phenomenon is much stranger, much more expansive than it’s usually given credit for. 

Many people know Katie King as a spirit that showed up in England in the 1870s and in Manitoba for the Hamilton family in the early 20th century. But her existence extends far beyond these instances, and the phenomena that occurred involves so much of what we might now refer to as “High Strangeness.” I’m a bit obsessed!▪︎

This is the fifth in the series Photography and the Invisible that explores the connections between photography, spiritualism, art, and the unseen. Explore more here.