Ghost hunting, occult phenomena, and the fascination with using light sensitive materials to uncover or expose the immaterial world has been a recurring desire since the dawn of photographic history. In 2015, after completing a series of photographs of small rural towns, photographer Barbara Diener met a woman named Kathy, whose family farm was haunted by her husband's ancestors. Using what Diener describes as "traditional and contemporary methods for capturing the invisible," and no Photoshop or post-production editing whatsoever, Diener embarked on a photographic journey to search for evidence of the spirits Kathy described. I spoke with Diener to learn more about her latest series Phantom Power, which Daylight Books will publish as a monograph in 2018.

Interview by Jon Feinstein

Jon Feinstein: How did this project start?

Barbara Diener: I had been photographing in a small town, about an hour and a half outside of Chicago, for a couple of years and one of my repeated subjects was a woman named Kathy. She owned the diner in town and now runs a catering company. Kathy and I were sitting at her kitchen table one afternoon when she told me that her home is haunted by her husband’s ancestors.

Feinstein: Can you tell me bit about the title?

Diener: I like the word phantom, as oppose to ghost or spirit. It seems a bit more ambiguous. Phantom power is the electrical DC current used to operate condenser microphones. You might have heard of an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), which is essentially a recording of ‘unexplained’ sounds, interpreted as communication from the spirit world. I am placing quotations around unexplained here because there are many explanations for EVP, like radio interference, white noise or as Brian Regal suggests in Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia (2009) sound artifacts from the recording process itself. Throughout this project I was interested in the intersection of science and faith and referencing an electric current that powers microphones, the instrument that is presumably used by spirits to communicate with us, seemed like the perfect fit for a title.

Feinstein: Were you into horror, science fiction, or occult phenomena growing up?

Diener: No, not really. That is a more recent development. I was however fascinated by Catholicism and the rituals surrounding such an organized religion. But part of that was certainly my desire to belong. This was before I knew that it was okay to be different. All my friends were Catholic and I know now that I was agnostic but didn't have a word for it at the time.

On a side note, I just found out that my grandfather, who died before I was born, was a Christian Scientist. He was a carpenter in Germany and fought in both World Wars. He had an injury on his leg, which magically got better and he attributed it to his faith. My mom is not sure if he was actually part of a congregation but he had all of Mary Baker Eddy’s books.

Feinstein: Do you consider yourself to be a spiritual person?

Diener: I’m really not. I was raised, if not atheist, certainly agnostic and that stuck with me. My father’s death 10 years ago only strengthened that, although I have tried to contact him through a medium as part of this project. According to her she was talking to him and she did say a few things that gave me pause. But ultimately I could not believe that my dad would be summoned by a medium.

The closest I have come to spiritual experiences is with art and nature. Bach’s Suite No.1 in G Major for cello, seeing certain photographs in person for the first time, or the video piece A Lot of Sorrow by Ragnar Kjatnansson and The National; The National performing Sorrow for 6 hours. What’s more spiritual than that? Maybe stepping up to the Grand Canyon or the Cliffs of Moher for the first time?

Feinstein: This project is a kind of offshoot of a personal documentary on Kathy, whose husband’s family farm is haunted by his ancestors. Did you encounter any spirits while working on this project?

Diener: Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of encountering any spirits or unexplained phenomena while making these photographs.

Feinstein: How has Kathy responded to your interest in working with her/ making these pictures?

Diener: As far as I can tell she has really enjoyed it. Kathy is extremely busy; she owns a couple of food trucks and travels with them to estate auctions and smaller fairs and events. In addition she caters. So when we find a weekend that works for both of us it’s nice to sit and chat and eat pizza for a bit before I start shooting. She has been amazing in offering up her space to use and jump in as a model when I have an idea for a portrait.

Feinstein: How do you think this work might relate to classic traditions of paranormal photography?

Diener: In some of my photographs I reference 19th century spirit photography directly through double exposures or long exposures. We now know a ghosted figure is just a person walking though the frame during a long exposure and an orb is light shining directly into the lens but starting in the 1860s these visual phenomena were promoted as proof of spirits. William H. Mumler discovered spirit photography through an accidental double exposure and started marketing himself as a medium, actively manipulating negatives to place deceased family members into the frame with the sitter.

Feinstein: Spirits aside, do you see this as being a commentary on the camera’s ability to communicate truth/bias?

Diener: I am not sure about a commentary, but yes, the relationship between truth and photography certainly factors into this project. I am misusing tools that are used to track spirits and am essentially reenacting or reinterpreting paranormal accounts, historical and contemporary, that I have read or heard.

To the people that report these stories I do believe that they feel real and true. But as much as we may like to prove that there is an afterlife and that a part of us continues on after we die, there is no undeniable visual proof of that, yet. In a way I am creating this proof and am providing a personal, visual interpretation of these experiences.

Feinstein: I hope I’m not leading with this, but in some ways I see this work being fitting into the conversation about “alternate facts” – what do you think?

Diener: Not intentionally, but yes, in retrospect it seems timely to talk about the work in that context. As I am sure you, and anyone reading this, knows there was a trend in contemporary photography for many years that can be described as fictional documentary. It certainly penetrated the art world with Alec Soth’s Broken Manual and Christian Patterson’s Redheaded Peckerwood. But it really just embraced the fact that the most objective attempt of taking a photograph is at it’s core still subjective, through many little choices the photographer makes before releasing that shutter.

Now with “fake news” and “alternate fact” subjectivity in journalism is getting into dangerous territory but maybe that is a conversation for another time.

The photographs I have made for Phantom Power certainly embrace “alternate fact” because the events or accounts I am referencing are facts for the people who experienced them.

After the invention of Spiritualism by the Fox sisters a wave of it swept both the US and Europe. Even though it is now a fact that the Fox sisters lied about being able to communicate with spirits, Spiritualism is alive and well as a recognized religion.

In 1882 the Society of Psychical Research was founded in London and in the 1910s and 20s several renowned Universities including Stanford and Duke established parapsychology departments and research labs to study telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and apparitional experiences. Unfortunately, none of the results could ever be replicated in controlled environments and most of these departments have closed down. There are still a few surviving in he UK and they are based in sub-disciplines of psychology.

I am very interested in this scientific turned pseudoscientific aspect of the paranormal and the desire to explain the unexplained.

Feinstein: How has Kathy responded to your interest in working with her/ making these pictures?

Diener: As far as I can tell she has really enjoyed it. Kathy is extremely busy; she owns a couple of food trucks and travels with them to estate auctions and smaller fairs and events. In addition she caters. So when we find a weekend that works for both of us it’s nice to sit and chat and eat pizza for a bit before I start shooting. She has been amazing in offering up her space to use and jump in as a model when I have an idea for a portrait.

Feinstein: The photograph “Marks on wheat field” is the least literally paranormal, but somehow has the most metaphoric charge for me. Can you speak to the importance of this image for you and its place in the larger body of work?

Diener: While making this work I did think a lot about loss and the desire to communicate with someone who has passed away, so it seemed fitting to use visual clues like imprints or the hint of a human presence to communicate this. In that sense “Marks on Wheat Field” does function metaphorically. There is nothing really paranormal about indents on a wheat field, but it references something that was there but no longer is, as well as more specific occurrences like crop circles. It is also one of maybe 10 photographs in the series that is taken in the daytime. To me it references a more subtle kind of magic and wonder, the kind you might find in the every day and the ordinary.

Feinstein: Has making this work changed your ideas about spirituality?

Diener: Sadly no, I am still a slightly cynical realist. With that said, I very much believe in “to each their own.” In my research for this body of work I became fascinated with quantum entanglement and quantum tunneling, which if you think about it, could offer an explanation for many unexplained phenomena. But there is so much we still don’t know about human conscious and the universe, black holes and dark matter. Maybe spirituality is not the right word but I am certainly enthralled with the limits of scientific research and the resulting UNKNOWN.

Photographer Hunts for Phantoms on a Haunted Family Farm