The Meening of Meadowfhur
In the autumn of 1975, Dr. George Meene presented the Larkspire Society for Psychical Investigation with photographic evidence of supernatural activity around the small, New England college town of Meadowfhur. Dr. Meene’s collection of vibrant photographs show color distortions and temporal shifting which he attributed to a newly discovered phenomenon. In his lecture to the society, he said of this phenomenon, which he named for himself, “It is best thought of as a reverse haunting; in that whereas a haunting is born of a tragic event in the past which leaves a residual energy, a Meening is caused by a cataclysmic event in our future, which is powerful enough to propel prismatic distortions backwards through time.” The effect of the Meening is clearly visible, appearing in the photographs as strikingly vivid rainbowed patches of light; meanwhile, the cause remains unknown.
“We should, at some point, expect to experience a catastrophic event,” forecast Dr. Meene, "something which will alter or end life on this planet.” His predictions seem dire, and unfortunately he did not survive to see them come true. He died in 1986. Fortunately for us, there has been no significantly catastrophic event to cause the backward rippling waves of prismatic distortions that is predicted by the Meening.
I first uncovered the work of Dr. George Meene in 2006, while compiling a catalogue of selected photographs from the archive of the Larkspire Society for Psychical Investigation, an organization which, although now defunct, was once the center of all things psychic and paranormal. Paging through the photographic archive, I was immediately drawn to the beauty of the wildly colorful, painterly scenes. My research showed that the photographs were widely believed at the time to be actual evidence of some hitherto unknown supernatural phenomenon associated with micro-singularities and gravitational lensing, but I had my doubts. Using Photoshop to analyze the photographs, I discovered they had been constructed using a photographic method that exploits a technical aspect of color photography. I have named this method Chronochromography.
red green blue
Every full-color photograph is made of three separate photographs, taken simultaneously, onto three different color-sensitive layers of the film. The layers are sensitive to red, green, and blue light and when developed produce images in full color. While making a Chronochromograph, each layer is exposed individually using a transparent, colored filter. The amount of time between exposures can vary but by my calculations, Dr. Meene waited for periods of several seconds to several minutes between each exposure. The effect is that patches of primary colors appear in areas of sun and shadow as the movement of the earth changes the direction and character of the sunlight in each exposure. Even though Dr. Meene’s creative misuse of color film may not have produced incontrovertible evidence of a reverse haunting, it has produced a vivid visualization of the Meening of Meadowfhur.
Jeffrey Steven Moser ©2008
Meadowfhur Artist Statement
My work often begins with a carefully crafted title. This photographic series is no exception and began as a ruminating phrase, “the meaning of metaphor.” The work was envisioned to be a metaphor for the nature of photography buried in some technical aspect of photograph making. As I played with the ideas of subject matter and composition, I also played with clever distortions of the title. First there was the alien visitation in a secret government location entitled “Meadow 4,” a la Area 51. This idea seemed prone to an overdose of Photoshop, something which, it seems to me, should be cautiously avoided. The idea then evolved into a fictional history of scientists developing and testing a gravitational lens camera. Sometimes the daunting logistics of the back-story leads me away from the tech-heavy explanations, even though technical descriptions are integral to all of my work. I eventually settled upon a fictional researcher, whose bold claims are matched only by the bold colors in his works. The final story of Dr. George Meene, my unabashed alter ego, is that he is a consummate self-promoter, naming the phenomenon for himself.
The images in the Meening of Meadorfhur were inspired by the work of Russian photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. A chemist by training, he received patents for producing color film slides. Under the patronage of Tsar Nicholas II, Gorskii traveled across the vast Russian Empire from 1909-1915 capturing the continent in beautiful color photographs. Using the method invented by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861, in which three black-and-white photographs are made through three consecutive filters of red, green, and blue glass, Gorskii made thousands of exposures of the Tsarist Empire. Driven from Russia by the 1917 Communist Revolution, he successfully fled to Paris with many of his original slides, saving them from almost certain destruction.
Pouring over the archive, I began to notice color distortions caused by the physical act of making the photographs. Because three separate exposures are required for a full color photograph, a short time delay between exposures is necessary for Gorskii’s clockwork camera to change filters and reposition the negative. The result is that clouds, leaves, and the heads of camels are fringed with little rainbows. In fact, anything that moves during the three exposures explodes into primary colors. In a photograph of hundreds of nomads, many dot the hillside like a balled up string of Christmas lights. Intrigued, I began to wonder what would happen if I push the amount of time between exposures from seconds to minutes, or even hours. What would happen is I let the earth turn a little or the weather to change, before the next exposure? The task of predicting the shifting of light and shadow and movement of clouds was almost as difficult as waiting patiently for twenty minutes or more for the light to change. Often I found myself spotting a perfect cloud on the horizon, my excitement building as I watch it cross the sky and line up with my subject, only to take the picture just a moment too soon, betrayed by my eager anticipation. But, as with all successful pieces, there are happy accidents, and unexpected gold.