Lisa Toboz

Issue 172

Ghost Stories (2020-2022)

“Photography serves to record the physical world, but Victorian spirit photography, at its most emotive, aimed to record the immaterial and unknown, which in turn, helped the living cope with unbearable trauma and loss. During my year-long battle with lymphoma, I found curiosity and comfort in spirit photography, which used photo manipulation to capture the spirits of loved ones after they had passed into an ephemeral existence. Ghost Stories is a visual metaphor for uncertainty, fear, wonder, and unexpected beauty that suggests an alternate survival space when reality is in chaos."

While fighting a life-threatening illness, Lisa Toboz became interested in Victorian spirit photography. Though widely seen as a form of photographic trickery, Toboz was intrigued by and sympathetic to the desire to photographically represent a spirit world larger than our material one, that speaks to life after death. Toboz staged self portraits around her home photographed with a Polaroid instant camera and then transformed the unique Polaroid instant photo with hand embellishments. The resulting series of unique images both embraces our expectations of photography as a means to materialize memory and desire, and defies its role as a medium that foregrounds visual description as a maker of value and truth.

Lisa Toboz lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.
lisatoboz.com | @lisatoboz