Ted Serios: Sagittarius Sun/Libra Moon

Untitled [Parthenon]
May 13, 1965
Polaroid

Ted Serios was a Sagittarius Sun/Libra Moon, like today’s astrology. Serios’s ability to transfer his thoughts onto a Polaroid picture, “thoughtography”, was studied by the psychiatrist Jule Eisenbud in the 1960s. While not a spirit photographer in the traditional sense, I consider him in the lineage of spirit photography, with the ability to capture the unseen on film. He would hold a “gizmo” (a rolled up piece of paper basically) to his forehead and to the lens of the camera and would let someone know when it was time to press the shutter. Then one day he suddenly lost the ability to make them. No one has figured out how it worked. Someone could mention a place and he would produce a picture of it, or he’d make a picture of a place that was a compilation of different iterations of the place over time.

Ted Serios’ Sagittarius Sun + Venus + North Node + Mercury explains his ability to “travel” in his mind to places and times that didn’t all exist at the same time.

Ted Serios had a 29 degree Pisces Chiron, conjunct the asteroid Niepce (at 3 degrees Aries). His Sun and Venus were conjunct in Sagittarius, part of why his identity involves making art from far away places (his mind, other times, other locations than the artist.) His moon at 0 degrees Libra is conjunct the asteroid Photographica at 25 degrees Virgo. These 0 degree Libra + 29 degree Pisces Chiron act like portals—the beginning of Venus (his creativity) and the last stop on the zodiac, the ability to have one foot in this world and one in the next of 29 degree Pisces Chiron, the Wounded Healer. His drinking (using escape as healing/Pisces) and creativity often came together, and he was able to cross over boundaries of what is usually possible for photography, projecting his thoughts onto film.

Check out the Jule Eisenbud collection on Ted Serios and thoughtographic photography at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Ted’s images have been digitized. There’s a book by Eisenbud (that’s in some parts very boring and also somehow the book itself is heavier than a usual book)—The World of Ted Serios.