Lisa Toboz is a self-taught, Pittsburgh-based artist with a background in writing and literature. Her work explores self-portraiture and creativity as a form of healing using various Polaroid cameras and film. She is inspired by vernacular photography, Victorian spirit photography, and ‘70s supernatural cinematography, as well as reading fiction. Her recent photo books include Dwell (Polyseme, 2020) and The Long Way Home (Static Age UK, 2018). Her Polaroid photography can be found in various publications including Shots Magazine, as a featured artist in She Shoots Film: Self Portraits, and Polaroid Now (Chronicle Books, 2021). A copy editor by trade, she has exhibited internationally and is represented by photographer Stefanie Schneider’s Instantdreams Gallery (Palm Springs, CA).
Ghost Stories continues themes from my Dwell series of isolation, mortality, healing and creativity during times of crisis, most recently the global pandemic, using a Polaroid Spectra System camera, expired and discontinued film, mixed media, and light painting. What started as a lifelong fascination with the supernatural evolved into exploring questions of temporality and legacy during my bout with cancer and eventual remission.
“Ghosts” are nebulous beings that hint at the possibilities of other realms, existing between reality and the imagination. During my yearlong battle with lymphoma, I found curiosity and comfort in Victorian spirit photography, which used photo manipulation to capture the “spirits” of loved ones after they had passed into an ephemeral existence. Many of the techniques used to trick people into believing supernatural occurrences (double exposures, abstract light forms) are now used in contemporary photography with artistic license to further complicate what we know to be “true.” Photography serves to record the physical world, but spirit photography, at its most emotive, aimed to record the immaterial and unknown, which in turn, helped the living cope with unbearable trauma and loss. Ghost Stories is a visual metaphor for uncertainty, fear, wonder, and unexpected beauty that suggests an alternate survival space when reality is in chaos.
