Symbolism, Esotericism, Occultism (1860 – 1918) Photography in the Art Nouveau Period

An exhibition produced in collaboration with Maison Hannon

Photography was never just about capturing reality. From alchemy to AI, it has always revealed hidden forces, merging chemistry, mystery, and imagination.

The exhibition illuminates photography at the moment it positions itself as a work of art. We encounter it through the prism of alchemy, understood as metamorphosis and spiritual quest. Fragment, image, and matter are transfigured into stages of the Great Work, where dissolution, transmutation, and revelation open a passage between the visible and the invisible. Beyond mere aesthetics, a Symbolist vision of the world emerges: art as an initiatory trace, an enduring memory, and a threshold to eternity.

To ensure a pleasant and stress-free visit, we strongly recommend booking, as it is the best way to guarantee your access to the exhibition.

Opening Hours

Day	Hours
Monday	Private visit under appointment
Tuesday	Closed
Wednesday	15:00 – 18:00
Thursday	Private visit under appointment
Friday	16:00 – 19:00
Saturday	15:00 – 18:00
Sunday	15:00 – 18:00

 

The exhibition demonstrates how photography has always been a space where chemistry, metaphysics, and imagination have come together by putting Péladan's Rose + Croix philosophy, Redon's surrealist vision, the Photo-Club's pictorialism, the Photo-Secession, and spirit photography from Hudson to Coates in resonance.  Each picture functions as an alchemical tablet, whether it is a portrait produced by Stable Diffusion or a darkened crystal described by Albertus Magnus. It freezes a fleeting piece of spacetime and encourages the observer to undergo their own interpretative metamorphosis.

All prints on display were created at TinyGallery using historical processes and recipes, serving as respectful reinterpretations of the original works.

Alchemy & Photography — Transmuting Light
In the nineteenth century, early photographers worked in darkrooms like modern alchemists, transforming light and silver salts into enduring images. Their chemical “transmutations” imbued photography with an aura of magic and, symbolically, fulfilled the alchemist’s dream of arresting time and preserving a fleeting moment forever.

Spirit Photography — Dialogues with the Invisible
The Spiritualist movement popularised “spirit photography,” in which cameras appeared to reveal ghostly figures alongside the living. Although controversial, these haunting images captivated the public and suggested that the photographic plate could serve as a fragile bridge to realms beyond direct perception.

Symbolist Imagery — From Theosophy to the Rose+Croix
Around 1900, photographers embraced Symbolism, drawing on Theosophy’s vision of hidden realities and the Salon de la Rose+Croix’s call for dream-like, spiritual art. Featured here are rare Autochromes by Belgian pictorialist Alfonse Van Besten (1865 – 1926). Produced on Lumière plates shortly after their 1907 debut, these glass transparencies translate Symbolist reverie into colour: velvet tonalities, pointillist grain and softly diffused light evoke stained-glass windows, inviting viewers to contemplate the threshold where matter dissolves into vision.

The Photo-Secession and the American “equivalent”
In America, Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession (1902) continued this trajectory: Camera Work and the Little Galleries promoted Gertrude Käsebier’s gums, Edward Steichen’s platinums, and Clarence H. White’s atmospheric studies as “equivalents” of inner states. The silver image became an alchemical crucible where matter absorbed emotion.

Women’s gaze and reconfiguring roles
Women photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron (active 1864-1879) and Frances Benjamin Johnston (1890s-1920s) challenged conventional images of femininity. Cameron combined pictorialist blur and Pre-Raphaelite symbolism to elevate models to sibyls or visionary saints; Johnston, an American New Woman figure, photographed students, athletes, and reformers, asserting their intellectual and professional autonomy. This prepared the way for Käsebier and Anne Brigman, whose theosophy-infused practice fused spiritual quest with self-assertion. The photosensitive surface became a space where women’s roles and powers were reconfigured alongside light and matter.

Occult modernities and emerging technologies
German Expressionist cinema (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu) created anxious chiaroscuro to visualise inner torment; in the 1960s, Kirlian electrical coronas transformed Péladan’s fluid halos into spectral discharges. Conceptual artists mixed x-rays, oscillograms, and infrared to redefine proof.

Today, generative AI replaces silver grains with probabilistic pixels; yet the alchemical analogy persists: an invisible field saturated with potential is revealed by a process – here neural network optimisation – akin to transmutation. Milky halos, spectral superpositions, dreamlike chiaroscuro reappear spontaneously; we speak of “ethereal glow” and “Symbolist aura.” Spirit photos of the past and AI composites today blur the lines between proof, apparition, and fiction, favouring psychic coherence over optical realism.

 

Historic reproductions

Created on salted paper, gum bichromate, and Van Dyke brown processes, and supplemented with crossover images from the archives of the following institutions:

Société Française de Photographie
Collectie F.Van Hoof-G.Williame
Atelier Symboliste
Musée de la Photographie (Charleroi)                                                                                      Musée de la Vie Wallonne                                                                                                          Province de Liège                                                                                                                        Musée de la Mine et du Développement Durable (Bois-du-Luc)                                          Tiny Gallery (Brussels)                                                                                                              Maison de la Métallurgie et de l’Industrie (Liège)                                                                  Archives et Musée de la Littérature (Brussels)                                                                        Service Général du Patrimoine de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles - Patrimoine numérisé