ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OPTOGRAPHY: The Shutter of Death

Written and Compiled by Derek Ogbourne

Number of words: 53,000- 70,000

Number of illustrations and photographs: 74-80

OUTLINE

Encyclopedia of Optography, The Living Camera is an artist produced book and anthology of academic writers, all of which have mutual research interests in the now mythical subject of Optography. Each writer has put a flag into the ground to stake out their own territory in a subject so obscure, forgotten and seeped in myth as though they are rediscovering and privileged to a secret world. Each one has independently gathered together pieces of the same jigsaw to make there own picture, which forms an encyclopedic description of the train of events that leave us with the myth of optography. The Encyclopedia of Optography is not an encyclopedia that we would normally expect with alphabetical and extensive referenced indexing, maps, illustrations, bibliographies and statistics. Some of these characteristics will be used like maps and illustrations, but essentially the title ‘Encyclopedia’ is used in a loose and slightly playful way.

Essentially this book serves as the most comprehensive body of knowledge on the subject of optography.

WHAT IS OPTOGRAPHY?

Optography is the technique of extracting, revealing and ‘fixing’ from the retina the last image seen by the subject’s eye at the moment of death. The image, set up under controlled conditions prior to extraction is preserved on the retina for a short time and can then be recorded photographically. In the 1870’s and 80’s the physiologist Wilhelm Kühne first exploited the newly discovered bleaching and regeneration of the retinal substance called Rhodopsin or Visual Purple which reacts to light from the ocular lens. Kühne produced a number of optograms including the ‘Human Optogram’.

In 1975 Evangelos Alexandridis, another physiologist from Heidelberg was asked at the request of the police to re-evaluate Kühnes experiments. He produced a small number of optograms from rabbits.

BACKGROUND

This project started with an art exhibition at Galerie Brigitte Schenk, Cologne entitled Museum of Optography from March to June 2007. An accompanying book was produced by print on demand called The Shutter of Death: Museum of Optography. The exhibition by Derek Ogbourne was a culmination of his research into the visual and metaphorical extrapolations of the optographic idea. The Museum of Optography also playfully manipulated the myth and reality of the optography. Ogbourne’s emphasis on the hunt for the Human Optogram and the discovery of the optograms uncovered by Evangelos Alexandridis were central to the exhibition. Encyclopedia of Optography, The Living Camera has less emphasis on the art exhibition and the art displayed at the Galerie Brigitte Schenk, although much of the images and some of the content derive directly from the Museum of Optography.

MARKET

The idea that one’s eye preserves the last moment of life has a powerful hold on the imagination. Generally, when people hear about optography, initial scepticism gradually changes into a desire to believe. Like UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster, optography is improbable but possible, it takes hold of our imagination, persisting most strongly in the notion that the eye of a murder victim contains the image of their assailant.

The book will appeal to artists, photographers, people studying the eye, general visual culture, historians, and people with an interest in pop culture, including crime and horror enthusiasts. Optography is a detective story, and this encyclopedia gives the reader a form of privileged ownership, in that it endeavors to contain the whole archive on the subject. This book is for anyone who has closed their eyes and imagined the last thing they will ever see. Its subject lends itself to the large market on esoteric and occult, crossing over into science, science fiction, the visual arts, photography and folk law. It is for both academics and the general reader. And, because it has been compiled by an artist, it will have strong visual appeal, doubling as an art book.

SELLING POINTS

This anthology is the only book ever to cover the subject of optography. It is the only comprehensive reference on the subject, and it contains the textual perspectives of a scientist, 3 historians and a philosopher, 3 artists and a novelist. But like Jorge Luis Borges references to ‘encyclopedias’, it contains elements of the imagination, with imagery drawn from the author’s art installation on the subject. It thus has strong visual appeal, with crossover into the pop and cult markets. Think of it as comparable, in a more elegant format, to RE/Search magazine, which appears perennially on the shelves of hip bookstores and their customers.

TABLE OF CHAPTERS

Derek Ogbourne: The Shutter of Death.

Addendum to the Museum of Optography.

The Optograms of Dr. Evangelos Alexandridis

Evangelos Alexandridis: Optography

The Human Optogram: The unusual case of Erhard Gustav Reif.

Arthur B. Evans: Optograms and Fiction: Photo in a Dead Man’s Eye.

Richard L. Kremer: The Eye as Inscription Device in the 1870s:

Optograms, Cameras and the Photochemistry of Vision.

Selected American press cuttings from1878 to 1932

Derek Ogbourne and Thom Kubli: e-mail conversation 2nd March 2006

Susana Medina: A Retinal Tattoo of Light

Derek Ogbourne: Retinal 145

Salvador Dalí, Gala, and Evangelos Alexandridis: The Dalí Tape (Transcript)

Rabbit machines

Derek Ogbourne: Trauma and the Creative Act.

Olly Beck: Memoirs of the Ocular.

Optography and Films

Bill Jay: In the Eyes of the Dead.

Ali Hossaini: Optography and Technologies of Perception

Derek Ogbourne and Paul Sakoilsky: Musings on Optograms, the ideal death, the ideal work of art and the ‘Museum of Optography’: a dialogue.

Susana Medina: On the Museum of Optography

Museum of Optography