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DATE 7/15/2025

Join us at the Atlanta Gift & Home Summer Market 2025

DATE 6/25/2025

Rizzoli presents Anderson Zaca with Thom (Panzi) Hansen for the NYC launch of 'Fire Island Invasion: A Day of Independence'

DATE 6/22/2025

Artbook at MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents Dawoud Bey, Michelle Kuo and Joseph Logan on 'Jack Whitten: The Messenger'

DATE 6/22/2025

Enlightening 'Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal' is Back in Stock!

DATE 6/21/2025

ICP Photobook Club presents Anderson Zaca on 'Fire Island Invasion'

DATE 6/20/2025

Attention photobook collectors, ‘Masahisa Fukase: Sasuke’ is Back in Stock!

DATE 6/15/2025

Gasoline and Magic for Father's Day, 2025

DATE 6/13/2025

In Nydia Blas' 'Love, You Came from Greatness,' the title says it all

DATE 6/12/2025

'Gordon Parks: Segregation Story' is Back in Stock!

DATE 6/9/2025

Four decades of previously unpublished work by Bruce Davidson

DATE 6/8/2025

Artbook at MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents J. Hoberman and Melissa Rachleff Burtt on 'Everything is Now'

DATE 6/7/2025

Artbook at MoMA PS1 Bookstore presents Jeanette Spicer launching 'To the Ends of the Earth'

DATE 6/5/2025

A love letter from Robert Frank


IMAGE GALLERY

Photograph of a young girl operating a planchette, from the collection of magician William Marriott, is reproduced from
CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/19/2019

Mind-unbending 'Spectacle of Illusion' excerpted in the 'Financial Times.' Pre-order now!

This weekend, the Financial Times published a major excerpt from our forthcoming book, The Spectacle of Illusion, magician-turned-experimental-psychologist Matthew L. Tompkins's riveting investigation of deception, magic and the paranormal from the eighteenth-century until now. Mesmerism, hypnotism, seances, spirit photographs, trance drawings, automata, trick photography, sleight of hand, ghost hunting, levitation, ectoplasmic ejaculations, ESP and many other tricks and practices are discussed in this fascinating exposé of our will to be deceived. "While neither magicians nor scientists can ever really 'prove' that past testimonials of supernatural phenomena are fraudulent or mistaken, contemporary researchers regularly demonstrate how eccentricities of healthy human perception, memory and cognition can result in vivid and robust illusions," Tompkins writes. "In many cases, scientific explanations of how our minds can produce such illusions are at least as wondrous as the proposed supernatural explanations… Indeed, some scientists are increasingly turning to magic as a tool to explore how sane, intelligent individuals can experience remarkably weird illusory episodes." Featured image, of a young girl operating a planchette, is from the collection of magician William Marriott.

The Spectacle of Illusion

The Spectacle of Illusion

D.A.P.
Hbk, 7 x 9.5 in. / 224 pgs / 165 color / 370 b&w.

$35.00  free shipping





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