So in our lecture at uni today we've been tackling the issues of Fact and Fiction in photography, discussing how an image can be manipulated for reasons good and bad. These reasons may be political, historical or editorial.
We were pointed in the direction of quite well known series of images from 1920, The Cottingley Fairies. I'd never seen these images before but they had quite an interesting story behind them and the images themselves are quite fun and magical.
They were taken in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, by two cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, who at the time were age 16 and 10 respectively. The 5 images were all developed by Elsie's father, Arthur, who was an amateur photographer with his own make-shift darkroom. They became known to the public in 1919 at a local Theosophical society meeting with a lecture on 'Fairy Life'. After being shown at various conferences they became more widely known and exhibited, which in turn made them sought after by various experts and spiritualists who were asked to give their opinions on them, even Kodak were asked for their thoughts on them!
After many years the girls finally got married and moved away until 1966 when Elsie, who had returned to England, was tracked down by a Daily Express reporter. In the interview Elsie admitted that although the fairies were simply 'a figment of my imagination' she believed that it is possible she could have photographed her thoughts. After this interview the images gathered quite a bit of media interest, magical fairies, who wouldn't want to read about them!
In 1976 Elsie and Frances were both interviewed for a programme to be shown on Yorkshire television, in which they both continued to deny that they had fabricated the images. It wasn't until 1983 that they both confessed to faking the images but still maintained that they had seen real fairies in their childhoods.
They claimed to have copied the fairies from a childrens book named 'Princess Mary's Gift Book', published in 1914. They used hat pins to support the cardboard cutouts. Of the series of five images they admit to faking four, but they always disagreed about the fifth, they agree they took the image but Elsie always claimed it was a fake whereas Frances insisted that they hadn't used any props in this image and that it was infact a genuine fairy!
The two cousins died within a two years of each other, Frances in 1986, Elsie in 1988.
At an auction in London in 1998 prints of the photographs, among other items sold for £21,620.
This final image is what was disputed between the two women. Frances claimed this was a genuine photograph and to me it does have a different 'aura'. Make of it what you will.
Wow, now there's an essay I'll be submitting =) Hopefully reading this has captured something in you, whether a childhood memory or you just want to go down the bottom of the garden and see if you're local fairies are playing!
As always, until next time......
