Episode 9: If You Could Read My Mind, Love

Ted Serios and Dr. Jule Eisenbud tried to convince the world that Ted had extraordinary powers- a special gift that allowed him to think super hard. He could think his thoughts with such voracity that they could travel through space and into a camera so they could be recorded on film. Unfortunately, Ted did not have special gifts. He did have a “gizmo” (his term, not mine) that acted as a tiny lens in order to reflect an image that the camera would pick up. Pretty clever, but not failproof- and something people eventually caught on to.

Here’s a picture of Ted Serios thinking really, really, really hard.

Jule Eisenbud (l) and Ted Serios

Here are a few of Ted’s ‘thoughtographs’ (Collection of University of Maryland, Baltimore County):

Here is a photo by Anton Guilo and Arturo Bragaglia that we sold at Sotheby’s in April of 2020 for $100,000 (against the pre-sale estimate of $50,000-70,000!) the Bragaglia brothers were Futurist filmmakers, writers, and artists. They created an amazing body of work and I really dug into the research on this one. Click here learn more.

UN GESTO DEL CAPO, 1911