Cottingley | Circa71

The first of the five photographs, shows Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies.

The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Conan Doyle, as a Spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted that the images were genuine, but others believed they had been faked.

The second of the five photographs, shows Elsie Wright with a fairy.

Frances and the Leaping Fairy, the third of the five Cottingley Fairy photographs

Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls grew up, married and lived abroad for a time. Yet, the photographs continued to hold the public’s imagination; in 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper tracked down Elsie, who had returned to the England. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story. In the early 1980s, both admitted that the photographs were faked using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children’s book. Yet Frances continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.

Fairy Offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie, the fourth of the photographs of the Cottingley Fairies