Frank N. Foster
Hometown: Grand Rapids, MI
Studio: 91 Ftizhugh Street, Grand Rapids, MI; Camp Chesterfield, IN
Alias: Frank N. Foster, Frank Foster, F. N. Foster
Frank N. Foster was a spirit photographer and medium who operated out of Grand Rapids, MI from the 1880s through the 1900s. In the 1900s he moved to the Camp Chesterfield Spiritualist community and was a resident spirit photographer. He also traveled from city to city to take spirit photographs in different settings without his own studio. One letter notes that his photos have two to five spirit faces and all the photographs taken in Philadelphia featured Native Americans and Quakers.
An advertisement in The Sunflower lists spirit photographs for $1.10 with experience of “over 20 years”.[1] An article printed in The Boston Globe describes experiments of seances and spirit photography that were successful.[2]
In 1922, the book Revelations of a Spirit Medium was rumored to have used Foster as a source for describing techniques in how fraudulent photos were produced.[3]
[1] The Sunflower – Oct 28th, 1905
[2] The Boston Globe – October 15, 1893
[3] Revelations of a Spirit Medium – 1922
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