THOUGHT PHOTOGRAPHY:
A PHOTOGRAPHER'S ACCOUNT
by
Lawrence Fried, President of the American Society of Media Photographers, The
Society of Photographers in Communications.
Lawrence Fried's photographs
have appeared in such publications as the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look,
Woman's Day, Paris Match, Vogue, Holiday, and Newsweek, and Fried is
the recipient of the Overseas Press Club Photography Award and seven different
awards from Popular Photography magazine. He is Director Of Photography
for the Image Bank, Inc., New York, New York.
Because of the
impromptu nature of the "thought photography" session between Lawrence Fried and
Uri Geller, the following report cannot be taken as positive proof of the
occurrence of a paranormal event. Fried's account of what he and his two
colleagues witnessed in Geller's Manhattan apartment on a day in mid-1973 is an
anecdote at best. Fried, an experienced photographer, is convinced that Geller
could not have removed the lens cap from the camera to take the "thought" image
that appeared on the developed film. The lens cap had been tightly taped on;
Fried (and his two assistants) had watched Geller throughout the session,
photographing him with another camera, and when Geller returned the camera he
had been using, it showed no signs of having been tampered with. The
circumstances under which the film was developed also convinced Fried that
Geller could not have used trickery at the developing stage of the photograph.
Fried recounts all of these things in his brief report, which is included in
this book because of Fried's unimpeachable professionalism and expertise with a
camera.
Published for the first time, with the permission of the
author.
IN MID-1973, I received a photographic assignment from Human
Behavior magazine to photograph the Israeli psychic Uri Geller. I had not
met Mr. Geller before this meeting took place, and, in fact, was not familiar
with his psychic abilities. At one point during our photographic session, Geller
mentioned, casually, that he had once or twice before been able to project his
own image on film through a completely closed camera. He was eager to try to do
it again.
I suggested that I put the lens cap on one of my lenses and cover
it with tape to make it entirely light-tight and then have Geller attempt to
take his own photograph. He agreed to make the attempt. He said he had never
done it with color film before, so I put color in the camera. I fastened the
lens cap very securely onto a 5o-mm Nikkor lens and then, using generous amounts
of photographer's gaffer tape (a two-inch-wide, silvery, clothlike tape), I put
two complete layers of said tape across the lens cap, overlapping at least an
inch onto the barrel of the lens. I then wound another long piece of tape around
the lens barrel itself, covering the ends of the first two layers that had gone
across the lens cap. I immediately handed the Nikon camera to Geller and with
another Nikon proceeded to photograph him.
Geller held the camera at arm's
length, pointing it at his head and tripping the shutter. (See Plate 47.) He
repeated this at various distances from his head until he had the camera pressed
directly against his forehead. He did this many times until the entire roll of
35-mm exposures had been "exposed." All the time Geller was tripping the
shutter, I was photographing him. My two assistants, Hank Gans and Laurel
Gallagher, were present, standing on either side of me and never taking their
eyes off Geller. In addition, there was also a reporter from the New York
Post in the room at the time. No one else was present.
I took the
camera from Geller's hands upon completion of the experiment and personally
removed the roll of film. I marked it to keep it separate from the rest of the
exposed film and put the roll in an inside pocket of my jacket. We packed our
equipment and left Geller's apartment. At no time after I loaded the camera
before the start of the experiment was I separated from that camera. It was
never out of my hands until the second I handed it to Geller, from which time I
never took my eyes off it and was never more than three to five feet away from
it. This can be corroborated by my two assistants.
The film (high-speed
Ektachrome) was sent to Berkey-K&L Laboratory, in New York, for processing,
with instructions that the processor not cut the roll or mount any slides if
there were any pictures on the film. Mr. Geller, incidentally, was never advised
as to where my film was to be processed.
The next morning I received the
processed roll from the lab and opposite frame marker number 10, on the edge of
the roll, was an image of Geller. It was somewhat out of focus and slightly
underexposed, but unmistakably a photograph of Geller taken at the exact spot
where the experiment had been conducted. (See Plate 48.) When I finally removed
the tape from the lens that Geller had used, there was absolutely no indication
that it had been disturbed in any manner whatsoever.
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