top of page
AlhambraTheatrePurpleandwhiteforwebsite copy 2.jpg

'Optograms'

In the 19th and early 20th century it was believed by some that the eye captured the last image seen by a person before their death. A photosensitive pigment known as rhodopsin or 'visual purple' was discovered in the retina, and it was supposed that a photographic image called an optogram could be printed from it. 

 

It was hoped that optography could be used as a forensic tool in murder cases, and was reportedly considered or even carried out on the women killed in the infamous Whitechapel murders of 1888, in the hope of capturing an image of the killer. 

 

These attempts at optography, though “hardly conclusive visually […] testified to the imperious desire to see through the eye of another human being, to perceive death through the vision of the deceased.” Marc Lenot, L’abstraction rétinienne’

 

Though ‘Optograms’ play into this ghoulish fascination, they do not focus on the killer, but instead centre the biographies of the women, etched on an imaginary ‘minds-eye’. Each print depicts a place significant in the lives of:

 

Annie Chapman, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Mary Ann Nichols, and Elizabeth Stride.

 

Photographs of the sites were copied as paintings, reversing the black and white. Then in digital photo editing software they were reversed again as negatives, so that they returned to the same colouring as the original photographs. 

Prints
 

Trafalgar Square
Merry Wives of Windsor pub
The Peacock Inn
29 Montpelier Place, Knightsbridge
The Peabody Building, Lambeth
Lambeth Workhouse
St. Bride's Church, Fleetstreet
Paris
St. Katherine Dock
The Swedish Church, Prince's Square
Hop-picking field, Kent
Poplar Highstreet
Alhambra Theatre of Variety, West End
Farmhouse, Stora Tumlehed, Sweden
Stafford Gaol
St. Leonard's Hill House, Windsor

All rights to reproduce and use all artworks by Kathryn Mason are  fully retained by the artist. 

bottom of page