Sunday, July 19, 2009

The Cottingley Faerie Photographs

This is an important month for faerie enthusiasts, since the first of the Cottingley photographs was taken in July, 1917. From that time until August, 1920, two young girls named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths took a series of remarkable photographs of themselves in the company of faeries. In 1920, the noted Theosophist Edward Gardner saw the pictures and believed that they were real. He passed them on to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The famous writer published the photographs in the November, 1920 issue of Strand Magazine, declaring them genuine. In 1981, the girls (who had then become old ladies) admitted in an interview for The Unexplained magazine that most of the images had been faked. However, Frances maintained until her death that there had actually been faeries in the garden and that the fifth picture, which contained only faeries, was real. Frances’ daughter and granddaughter showed off the original photographs in a January, 2009 episode of the television series Antiques Roadshow. Both of them also professed their belief that the fifth photograph was genuine.

--Joelle

8 comments:

  1. I have never heard of these photographs before but how amazing. Even if most or all of these things were invented by the girls, how extraordinary they are for doing such a thing.

    Do you think this story is the inspiration for Brian Frouds book "Lady Cottington's book of Pressed Faeries".

    -Liz Chernov

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  2. I don't know for sure, but I've certainly had that thought before myself! The names (Cottingley/Cottington) are so similar!

    I certainly feel that the girls were very creative, though I'm willing to believe that the photographs could be real. How I wish I could have interviewed them!

    --Joelle

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  3. I'd love to hear more about what indicates to you that the photographs could be real.

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  4. Oh Joelle,
    I have one more unrelated question. Do you ever feature faerie artists on your blog?

    -Liz Chernov

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  5. Liz --

    I've never been fortunate enough to see any faeries myself (yet!), but I truly believe that there are things out there that we usually only see "out of the corner of the eye". I haven't focused on artists in my blog so far, but I'd be open to the idea.

    --Joelle

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  6. There is a movie about this. Fairy Tale: A True Story. It is a very cute movie, and a wonderful family film.

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  7. I have just visited an exhibition (here in UK)featuring the original photographs from Cottingley amongst many other fascinating works (indeed in this part of the world there has been two both equally brilliant)and the camera that was used to take the images. Although there was one of the images that they said was the real imagee. In the real shot it is faded at the top but it appears to be filled in on a reproduction (the fairy bower). It was fascinating to be so close up to them just missed meeting Christine Frances's daughter who had been the week before signing her book. sent in love and fairy wishes Libby x0x0x (aka Libithina)

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  8. I was given permission from both of the curators to take some overview shots of the exhibitions with a view to doing a write up ~ as both were equally stunning and well laid out and presented ~ magical xoxoxo

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