Now, the Buckland has just announced that it’s once again teamed up with Taggart for MEDIATRIX: New Work by Shannon Taggart, an exhibit featuring 25 photographs capturing spiritualist phenomena during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, I wanted to continue photographing mediums despite restrictions on travel and in-person interaction,” says Taggart in an artist statement about the exhibit. “But photography requires presence. Again, I took inspiration from the Spiritualists. They believe that otherworldly communication cannot be bound by time or space. They have a tradition of experimenting with media, technology, and automatic art to bridge the gap between this world and the next. The images here explore these ideas about merging realms, using the internet, a screen and a camera. They were taken via Skype, Zoom,or FaceTime, collaborating with mediums entranced in distant places.”
Buckland Museum Director Steven Intermill says it’s an honor to work with Taggart again.
“My initial reaction to hearing the direction of her new work was ‘of course,’” he says. “It’s in the nature of Spiritualism to draw on the technology on hand. Spirit has no boundaries so the tools to communicate shouldn’t either. Our founder Ray Buckland may be most famous for his contributions to American witchcraft, but he also wrote a number of books exploring Spiritualism, psychic phenomenon, and the paranormal, so this work fits perfectly on our gallery walls.”
The exhibit opens on Tuesday and continues through Sept. 1.
This article appears in May 18-31, 2022.
