In March 2010 I was in Cambridge University Library
examining a trio of albums containing a large quantity of spirit photographs
taken by Ada Deane, dated 1920-23. These
albums are part of the archives of the Society for Psychical Research and
contain photographs in which sitters are shown with alleged spirit extras. While leafing through the first album I was
struck by one subject who reminded me of the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein. In the drapery above the
sitter’s head can be seen a spirit face.
Most of the sitters in the albums are ordinary members of the public,
though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle does make an appearance, so it seemed odd that
someone like Wittgenstein would have consented to have his picture taken in
such circumstances.
There were some items in favour of this being
Wittgenstein, but more against.
Wittgenstein was born in 1889 so would have been about the right age
(c31-34). The hairstyles were similar,
and the Deane subject’s jacket possibly had a continental look. He was wearing a jumper, and while I have not
found a photograph of Wittgenstein so attired, he did dress casually, without a
tie; a jumper is the sort of bohemian garment he might have worn. Above all the mystery man does not look like
a typical Deane sitter and stands out.
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| The mystery sitter in Ada Deane's album |
Against this, Wittgenstein lived in Austria after the
First World War until 1929, when he moved to Cambridge. The hairstyle is ordinary
enough to make it less than compelling evidence. Most significantly of all, would he have sat
for Deane? I asked a friend at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie
und Psychohygiene in Freiburg for his opinion and he was sceptical that
Wittgenstein could have even met Deane, on the grounds that Wittgenstein would
have loathed the idea of spirit photography. But we don't know the
circumstances in which it was taken. One
does not need a Spiritualist motivation to sit for a spirit photograph, it may
be regarded as an intriguing experience: Wittgenstein could have decided to try
the process from a sense of adventure, or perhaps he had suffered some trauma
during the war and thought that it might have therapeutic benefit.
The following year the University of Cambridge,
supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum in London, mounted a small exhibition on
Wittgenstein and Photography in its Photographic
and Illustration Services to mark the 60th anniversary of his death (later
shown at the London School of Economics).
The display included, as well as portraits of him, an exploration of his
wider involvement in photography and the connections to his philosophy. Before I visited it I thought I would see if
others saw any resemblance between Wittgenstein and the man in Deane’s
photograph. I had taken a handheld copy and
put a cropped version (minus the spirit extra) on Facebook, asking simply if
anybody recognised the individual. Only
one person responded (the writer Anthony Peake), and he said he thought it bore
a resemblance to Wittgenstein. The
cropped version is at the top of this article.
I had hoped that I would see a portrait of
Wittgenstein at the Cambridge University exhibition from the same period as
Deane’s photographs to help me decide either way, but unfortunately there was
nothing dated about 1923. One from 1930,
when he was a Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge, bore a vague resemblance,
and was probably what sprang to mind when I first saw the Deane album. He is wearing a plain jacket, though of a
different style, and while his eyes look more recessed and his eyebrows darker
than the Deane sitter, differences in illumination could conceivably account
for such discrepancies. A photograph
included in the catalogue from 1920 certainly does not resemble hers, but it is
worth bearing in mind that he seems to have aged rather fast over the decade so
it is not impossible that he could have looked so much older three years later.
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| Wittgenstein in 1930 |
As the exhibition’s title suggests, Wittgenstein was fascinated
by the medium, both as a practitioner and theoretician. One project included in the show was the
construction of a composite photograph made some time during the 1920s,
inspired by the work of Francis Galton, which blended his own features with
those of his three sisters. Despite the
firm opinion of my friend at IGPP in Freiburg, it felt entirely possible that
someone interested in the way images can be manipulated to make a new reality
might also be interested in how they can represent the unseen in spirit
photographs.
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| Wittgenstein in 1920 |
Leaving aside comparisons between the Deane photograph
and portraits of Wittgenstein taken at various times, the key question was
whether he was actually in England during the period covered by the albums. An email to the Cambridge Wittgenstein
Archive in January 2016 appeared to lay the matter to rest. After the First World War ended he travelled
outside Austria only twice before 1929. In
1921 he went to Norway, and during the summer of 1925 he visited John Maynard Keynes
in Sussex and his friend William Eccles in Manchester. He finally moved to Cambridge in January 1929. So he was outside England entirely between
1920 and 1923. It is possible that there
was an undocumented trip between those dates, which seems most unlikely, or
that the date in the Deane albums is incorrect and they include photographs
taken after 1923, and Wittgenstein dropped into Deane’s studio in London en route to Sussex or Manchester. Either suggestion feels like clutching at
straws.
To conclude, my suspicion is that while I really do
wish I had stumbled across a hitherto unknown photograph of Wittgenstein
sitting in Ada Deane’s studio, the answer to the question posed in the title is
‘probably not’ as the weight of the evidence is strongly against the
possibility. But you never know, an
authenticated picture of Wittgenstein might turn up in which he looks
unambiguously the same as the Deane sitter, though the puzzle would still
remain when he did it, and why he was there.
Acknowledgement:
I would like to thank the Wittgenstein Archive in Cambridge for the
speedy response to my enquiry asking about his travels outside Austria between
1918 and 1929.
