Shannon Taggart
Table-Tipping Workshop with mediums Reverend Jane and Chris Howarth. Erie, Pennsylvania (from Seance), 2014
archival digital print
12h x 18w in
5 + 2AP
"Table tipping is the quintessential Spiritualist activity ... Many have wondered why tables? Archivist Walter Meyer zu Erpen surmises they were chosen because tables bring people together" - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Reverend Jean heals Jennifer, the Healing Temple. Lily Dale, NY (from Seance), 2003
archival digital print
12h x 18w in
5 + 2AP
"Mesmeric healing is a technique similar to reiki ... healers move their hands and arms around bodies, hovering without making contact" - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Medium Kevin Lawrenson Demonstrates Trance to a Small Group of Developing Mediums. Montcabirol, France (from Seance), 2014
archival digital print
12h x 18w in
5 + 2AP
"Tom Morris and Kevin Lawrenson were originally antique dealers, and Kevin describes their interests as mediumistic: "You can feel the spirits of the people in the objects." - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Instrumental-Transcommunication and Smoke-Scrying Experiment outside the Séance Room. England (from Seance), 2013
archival digital print
18h x 12w in
5 + 2AP
"I had some downtime before the sitting began ... I waited in the pub, facing the fireplace ... photographing the smoke rising up in the chimney before me." Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Medium Sylvia Howarth, Trance Dancing, England (from Seance), 2013
archival digital print
18h x 12w in
5 + 2AP
"Both Chris and Sylvia Howarth carefully curate a mix of songs for their seances and mediumistic experiments. I took this picture of Sylvia accessing "parallel worlds" as she danced to the Carly Simon tune "You're so Vain"" - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Medium Sylvia Howarth enters a Trance, England (from Seance), 2013
archival digital print
18h x 12w in
5 + 2AP
"Sylavia Howarth's mediumship merges visionary art-making, technology, and trance mediumship into a system she calls "beyond the light of being"" - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Spirit Photography Class Experiment—medium Annette Rodgers with Spirit Extras Interpreted to be a Mongolian Spirit Guide and an Aging Nikola Tesla. Arthur Findlay College, England (from Seance), 2018
archival digital print
18h x 12w in
5 + 2AP
"Spiritualists don't consider spirit guides to be evidential. But, in your photo, this man was saying to us all - guides are evidence." Kim Moore-Cullen, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Psychometry Experiment with Helen Duncan’s Crystal Ball. Arthur Findlay College, England (from Seance), 2012
archival digital print
12h x 18w in
5 + 2AP
"Scrying is an ancient method that employs a reflective device - such as a crystal ball, bowl of water or mirror - in attempts to see visions of spirits or details of the past, present, or future." - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Automatic Writing Experiment using a Planchette. Arthur Findlay College, England (from Seance), 2012
archival digital print
12h x 18w in
5 + 2AP
" A planchette - from the French for "little plank" is a small triangular device used for different automatic processes conceived by Spiritualists." - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Swan on Lake Cassadaga. Lily Dale, NY (from Seance), 2010
archival digital print
12h x 18w in
5 + 2AP
"Mediums and researchers have told me they suspect water acts as a conductor for psychic energy." - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart
Susan Barnes’ Medium’s Cabinet. Lily Dale, NY (from Seance), 2015
archival digital print
12h x 18w in
5 + 2AP
"Mediums cabinets have always linked seances to stage magic. The first cabinet appeared during perfomances by Ira and William Davenport, Spiritualists from my hometown of Buffalo, NY." - Taggart, Seance.
Shannon Taggart (b. 1975, Buffalo, New York) explores the intersection between Spiritualism and photography.
Taking a reflexive approach, she uses one to examine the other, probing each practice’s complicated relationship with truth. Citing Spiritualism’s visual record as one of the most bizarre, absurd, and uniquely unsettling chapters within the history of photography, her work is an attempt to build on this strange record.
Taggart’s images have been featured internationally, including in the publications TIME, New York Times Magazine, Discover, Reader’s Digest, and Newsweek. Nikon, Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath Foundation, American Photography, International Photography Awards, and the Alexia Foundation for World Peace have recognized her work. Taggart’s first monograph, Séance (Fulgur Press 2019, Atelier Éditions 2022), was named one of TIME Magazine’s ‘Best Photobooks of 2019.’ A solo exhibition of Séance originated at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, UMBC, Baltimore, MD, in 2021, traveling to the Pensacola Museum of Art in 2022 and the University of Northern Iowa in 2023. Selected group exhibitions include Undead Archive, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, CA. (2023); Medium, San José Foto, Uruguay (2018); Verbal – Somatic – Material, New York University (2013); We Are Witnessing The Dawn of An Unknown Science, Photoworks, Brighton, UK (2007); Concerning the Spiritual in Photography, Photographic Resource Center, Boston (2004). Taggart is currently working on an illustrated book on The Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT), one of the most exotic cases within the history of psychical research.
