Haunted Air

Haunted Air

Anonymous Halloween photographs from c.1875â€“1955â€”truly hauntingÂ Americana, with a foreword by David Lynch
Â
The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, andÂ others. The roots of Halloween lie in the ancient preâ€“Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging "soul cakes" in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming halfâ€“remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Halloween was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living, and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.

Country USA
Brand Jonathan Cape
Manufacturer Random House UK
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber Illustrated
ReleaseDate 2011-06-06
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780224089708

Country	USA
Brand	Jonathan Cape
Manufacturer	Random House UK
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	Illustrated
ReleaseDate	2011-06-06
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780224089708

You might also like...