Occult Strategies for Visionary Photographers

THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S GRIMOIRE

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The Photographer's Grimoire is a practical manual for using photography as an occult practice.

It will help you to take seriously the uncanny, unexplainable moments and strange synchronicities that are already showing up in your photographs, so you can work with them deliberately instead of dismissing them.

Have you ever photographed something you couldn't explain?

A ludicrous coincidence?

Something uncanny?

You are not alone.

Inside the book is a working framework built from 26 years of experiences by an award-winning documentary photographer Edward Thompson (published by National Geographic Magazine, The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph Magazine.)

This isn't a memoir about one photographer's trippy adventures. It's a toolkit for having your own.

Drawing on Chaos Magic, Zen philosophy, Celtic Shamanism, Gnosticism, and photographic theory, Thompson builds a practical framework for understanding photography as occult practice.

Grounded in his own empirical experience as a working photographer and cunning man. The result is unlike any existing photography book or occult text: part field manual, part philosophical investigation.

Magical Photography Field Manual

Award Winning Photographer

Edward Thompson is a British documentary photographer whose work has featured in National Geographic Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine and The Guardian.

His photographs have been exhibited at The Saatchi Gallery, Somerset House and at international photo-festivals in the U.K, France, Finland, Norway, and Spain.

He has published five photography books since 2011. These are in the collections of The National Art Library, The Bishopsgate Institute, The Museum of London, The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and The Devil’s Museum, Lithuania.

He's won a Sony World Photo Award, A Fuji Film Distinction Award, and The Special Prize at The Magnum Photo / Ideastap Award.

Grimoire Contents

The Visionary Photographer
A childhood photograph of a mysterious stick circle found deep in a hurricane-flattened wood sets the tone for a chapter about magical thinking, no-mind and the art of willing a moment into being before the shutter ever clicks. Drawing on Henri Cartier-Bresson, Zen philosophy and Thompson's own experiences, this chapter lays out the core practice of the book: learning to see photography as a form of active spellcraft.
The Solo Practitioner
The documentary photographer as lone wizard. A chapter about working alone, following intuition, infiltrating the world, and being ready when the encounter arrives. Why does the best work sometimes happen when you're not looking for it?
Alternative States Through Photography
How do different states of mind affect the way we see? From meditation and hangovers to anxiety, visual overload, love, motorway driving and video games, Thompson maps the strange routes that can lead to the photographic trance.
Photographic Tasks
The working grimoire proper. A hands-on toolkit of rituals, games and thought experiments, including Sigil Magic, Alchemy and The Stranger. Here Thompson introduces Synchromancy, his own system of photographic exercises designed to get you out into the world and practicing.
The Synchro-Chaotica: An Index of Results
What do you call the strange coincidences that start happening once you photograph this way? This chapter introduces five categories of photographic synchronicity, giving language to the uncanny experiences that serious photographers have felt but never had a name for.
Belief & Action
Does any of this require belief to work? The Grimoire closes with a final argument about photography, magic and action. Photographing is the ritual.

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The Photographer’s Grimoire