Shadow Creatures – From Spirit Photography To The Ghosts Of The Algorithm at Fotomuseum Winterthur

Shadow Creatures at Fotomuseum Winterthur explores the hidden dimensions of images, from nineteenth-century spirit photography to AI-generated figures and algorithmic phantoms, questioning how images reveal what remains invisible.

Overview

The exhibition shifts the focus from photography as a medium of light and evidence to the shadows that surround images. Shadow Creatures explores how photographs and digital images have long been used to summon, construct, and imagine beings beyond ordinary perception.

Spanning from the history of spirit photography to contemporary artificial intelligence and algorithmic image production, the exhibition brings together ghosts, occult figures, glitches, and non-human entities that appear across analogue and digital image worlds. It examines how images are never merely objective records, but spaces where imagination, uncertainty, cultural beliefs, and hidden fears can emerge.

By placing historical photographic practices in dialogue with contemporary technologies, Shadow Creatures reveals parallels between nineteenth-century attempts to capture invisible presences and today’s algorithmic systems that generate new forms of digital phantoms. The exhibition features works by Cihad Caner, Nina Davies, Tomokichi Fukurai, Sung Chi-Li, William H. Mumler & Helen F. Stuart, Trevor Paglen, Mario Santamaría, Janne Schimmel, Steph Maj Swanson, Shannon Taggart, Agate Tūna, and Sheung Yiu.

The exhibition is co-produced with Kutxa Fundazioa and forms the second edition of [permanent beta]. A trilingual publication in English, Spanish, and Basque accompanies the exhibition, published by DISTANZ.