ABSTRACT
Haunting haunts the history of photography; from its earliest days the camera was used to try and photograph ghosts and other presences that seem to hover at the limits of perception. The beauty and fascination of the photograph is that, like a ghost, it occupies a realm between reality, memory and the imagination: it is both a residue of a past moment caught in light, a commemoration of that moment, and a frame for our imaginative engagement with it. The dynamic interrelation of these conditions has a spatial, architectural quality that resonates with Freud’s and Lacan’s descriptions of human perception and subjectivity, in particular as applied to the experience of the uncanny. It is, perhaps, this resonance that explains the attraction of photography as a means to explore our subjective, emotional engagement with space, even with the architecture of our memories and dreams.
