OCCULT PHOTOGRAPHY

Occult Photography. Part One.

What I refer to as “occult photography” has been the foundation of my practice since the beginning and supports all other forms of expression I use. I have touched upon it occasionally in essays and posts, but have never delved into the ontological core of the medium. This is why I have decided to explore it in more depth. I intend to write about it from a practical perspective!

Jacques Derrida’s statement that ‘every photograph is of the sun’ becomes ‘every occult photograph is of the black sun’ in sorcerous theory and practice. Actually, my essay could end here, so essential is this insight. I therefore ask you not to rush on, but to reflect on both Derrida’s statement and its sorcerous counterpart.

Derrida’s argument about photography concerns sunlight, whose source is not visible in the image. In occult photography, however, as I conceive of it, the focus is on the darkness between the stars and the hidden radiance that emanates from it. Occult photography foreshadows the dark light that is not accessible to normal sight.

Let’s start at the beginning. The word ‘photography’ means ‘writing with light’, but we could just as easily call it ‘skiagraphy’, which means ‘writing with shadows’. It is the art of capturing Urbilder — primal images that act as gateways into the abyss of unknowing. Sharon Moyal called it ‘converting attention into gravity’ in one of our conversations.

My view of photography is shaped by mystical thinking, although I must say that this is a form of mysticism without God. The inner light I speak of is therefore not divine. However, it expresses the dark sacred. To follow my train of thought, you must venture with me into speculative territory that can only be explored to a limited extent with scientific arguments. Occult photography reveals poetic truths. However, I believe that scientific findings can complement and reinforce such findings. Think of them as bridges that will prevent us from falling into the abyss before we have even begun our real journey.

Occult Photography. Part Two.

I first came into contact with photography when I was given a Polaroid camera for my first communion, which printed black-and-white photos directly onto paper. The chemicals were part of the print itself and the negative film, which had to be separated from the positive by hand, contained a corrosive developing fluid that could cause burns if touched before it was completely dry. The danger involved both attracted and repelled me.

The film ‘The Omen’, which I saw when I was eighteen, introduced me to the demonic nature of photography. In it, a photographer captured shadows that pierced the image and hinted at the individuals’ manner of death. In addition to the film’s prophetic announcement that the Antichrist would rise from world politics, I was fascinated by demonic contamination – the sinister markings that were present in the photographs. It was unclear whether these were development errors or the result of the omen that gave the film its title. I later referred to these phenomena in my work as ‘predatory abstraction’.

My fascination with photography stems from exploring blackness, which I have always considered to be its true essence. Remember that photographic paper is white before exposure, and the image is revealed through blackness. Another important aspect of analogue photography is the reversal of negative and positive, whereby light areas appear dark and vice versa. For someone who considers the black sun to be the Holy Grail, this is fucking golden. Developing photos in the lab was a manipulative, sorcerous act for me. I worked a lot with superpositions of multiple negatives on one image, and often I only partially fixed the prints, leaving the development process incomplete and the image unstable and ‘pockmarked’ by brown stains.

Over the decades, I have spent thousands of hours alone in the darkroom. Working there has taught me that beneath the seemingly tame surface of photographic matter, there are occult forces with which one can engage. This has also sparked my interest in photograms, which offer insights into the underlying principles of the universe.

Occult Photography. Part Three.

Images of burning oil wells from the First Gulf War that were broadcast in the early 1990s inspired me to pour petrol onto photographic paper and set it alight. The flame exposed the paper, creating photograms that were often traversed by what looked like cancerous black suns. Occasionally, the pareidolia effect also led to the suggestion of threatening faces. I then combined the individual prints into large assemblages.

These cameraless photographs were a breakthrough in my understanding of the medium. I realised that fundamental processes, entities or principles express themselves in photographic images when the human urge to control the outcome fades into the background.

During those years, I was preoccupied with chaos theory which demonstrates the self-organisation of life. Exploring the chaosmos in the photograms offered a new visual perspective on the universe. I discovered that the same fundamental principles of organisation and change that apply to the macro level of the universe also apply to the micro systems I observed when photographic paper was exposed to burning petrol.

Alongside studying the inner workings of nature, I developed my thinking through images based on associations and comparisons. The visual kinship that has always been at the heart of magical thinking suggests that things that resemble each other are related and can potentially be transformed into one another. Chaos theory proved that universal connections exist. It also showed that feedback loops and repetitions can cause vibrations that bring about changes on the smallest and largest scales.

Photograms enable us to capture the perspective of things. This is now referred to as the ‘nonhuman gaze’. When I was working on these pieces in the early 1990s, the creative potential of agentic matter was not as widely discussed in the art world or academia as it is today. But we need to go beyond these realms.

Occult Photography. Part Four.

Simply put, when we look at something, light reflected from it enters the eye through the pupil (i.e. a hole) and is processed into images by the brain. Photography mimics this process, and the photos I value most remind us that light enters both the body and the camera through a black hole.

In film photography, a latent image is created in the light-sensitive emulsion and made visible through a chemical development process. From an occult perspective, this means that black light and the entities that inhabit it are captured in a layer consisting of gelatine (i.e. crushed and melted animal bones), crystals and silver salts.

In digital photography, the camera’s sensors convert light photons into electrical signals. From an occult point of view, this process converts demonic particles into charges that generate sorcerous images. AI photography is something else entirely, as it uses algorithms to generate images from data. This is outside my area of expertise, so I will not comment on it. Besides, no one knows what the future will bring in this regard.

Over the past 50 years, I have spent roughly equal amounts of time practising analogue and digital photography. Here are some thoughts that I believe apply to both.

The photographer’s alchemical task is to fix the volatile and to volatilise the fixed. Most photo theorists will agree with me on the first part of this statement. Many have pointed out that photography freezes the world into immobility. In his book Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes even claimed that photography takes life, describing photographers as ‘agents of death’. But Barthes was also aware of the magical nature of photography and tried to bring his mother’s essence back to life through the medium.

The relationship between photography, mourning and death has been extensively explored, and many associate the term ‘occult photography’ with early 20th-century ghost photography. However, my focus is on the contemporary and the redistribution of agency within the photographic process. This is ultimately a political issue.

Occult Photography. Part Five.

Whether we are politically motivated or not, whenever we take a photograph, we exercise power over what it depicts. We all play a role in the exercise of political power, whether we are aware of it or not. When we point our cameras at the world, we are not documenting reality – we take possession of it. The demonic aspect inherent in the word ‘possession’ is deliberately chosen here. We gain control over what we show and claim ownership of it. Photographs are never neutral. And they always have power.

During the colonial era, for instance, photography was a weapon used to bring order to what was perceived as wild, chaotic, and threatening. For those interested in exploring how it was used against colonised populations, I recommend reading “an alle orte die hinter uns liegen” by Sinthujan Varatharajah. Unfortunately, it has only been published in German so far. The book shows how Europeans deliberately used the camera to assert their own humanity by subjugating other life forms. Important insights, as these mechanisms are still at work today.

But despite all my criticism of photography as an instrument of domination, I believe in its revolutionary potential. By combining our creativity with that inherent in the medium itself, we can challenge the human-centred perspective and pave the way for profound change. Occult photography is also a weapon, but it draws on the power of the accidental, which undermines any unilateral claim to authority. Furthermore, the contaminating lights and shadows that constitute its sorcerous essence counteract the clean evil of aesthetic capitalism.

At the heart of photography lies the question of ownership and what is actually captured in a photograph. Several elements are superimposed: the image that the subject radiates into the world; the photographer’s appropriation of this image from their own perspective; the accidental elements and mistakes that affect the image and give it its spellbinding impact; and last but not least, the photographic materiality itself. A photograph is not merely an image of something else; it has its own ontological reality.

Occult Photography. Part Six.

My aim is not to celebrate the stillness of the photographic image. The French expression ‘sage comme une image’, meaning ‘as well-behaved as an image’, expresses what I avoid. I am not concerned with polite, detached contemplation, but with engaging with the predatory shadows that constitute the very essence of occult photography.

Don’t think of shadows as the absence of light, but as a demonic presence that spreads contagiously. When it takes hold of photographic matter, it becomes a living shadow. When it does not freeze. When it absorbs black light and does not let it rest.

Both the photographer and the photograph must crave the shadow. Shadow work is hungry work. Without hunger, there is no occult photography. And hunger is only hunger when it cannot be satiated. The photograph must not be stilled. The fixed must be volatised.

Conventional photography is an act of appropriation. There is a reason why it is said to be akin to stealing souls. Pursuing this idea from a contemporary philosophical perspective makes it clear that not only human souls are stolen. Photography takes possession of everything whose image it captures, the entire “landscape,” a term that in itself reflects the human-centred perspective.

This is where occult photography reveals its revolutionary potential. It enables us to escape the hall of mirrors that traps us in our own reflection and connect to the wider planetary system. Up to this point we are still on relatively safe academic ground covered by environmental philosophy. It is when it is put into practice that it becomes groundbreaking. When we actually become the ‘other’.

I will return to the practical aspect in my ongoing investigation of Becoming Demonic, which I’m conducting with Sharon Moyal and other sorcerous artists. For now, let me conclude this exploration of occult photography by noting that it reflects the profound crisis of perception that we are witnessing today. Drawing on the breakdown of reality in the 21st century, occult photography paves the way for a profound shift in our fundamental understanding of existence and our relationship with the world.

Gast Bouschet, 10 September 2025.