ONOFROFF illusionist hypnotist telepathy entertainer ca. 1900 SIGNED PHOTO

Description

This is a single weight photograph
of
A. Bally d' Onofroff, an illusionist, hypnotist and telepathic entertainer. He used various surnames in his travels.
Excerpt from an article on the internet is posted below.
"The illussionist Onofroff in Buenos Aires (1895) and Ciudad de México (1900). Hypnosis, magnetism and the problem of the paranormal in two Latin American contexts."
Article by Mauro Sebastian Vallejo from 2015.
The essential objective of this article is to carry out a comparative study of the visits that the illusionist Onofroff made to the capitals of Argentina and Mexico, in 1895 and 1900 respectively. As part of his successful trips to the American continent, the illusionist stayed in those two cities for a long time, and his presence generated different reactions from multiple actors from the cultural settings. Doctors, spiritualists, writers and politicians from every context were attracted by the telepathy and hypnotism shows offered by the artist. As we intend to show throughout these pages, the study of Onofroff's demonstrations goes beyond the scope of the history of late-century theatrical events. Conversely,the analysis of their disturbing presence can function as a prism that reflects in a privileged way numerous edges of the cultural, scientific and ideological frameworks of the mentioned cities of Latin America. By taking into consideration some aspects of the scientific cultures of the capitals of both countries, we will try an explanation of the different responses that Onofroff's shows were abIn March 1895, an illusionist arrived in the city of Buenos Aires who for three months would have the Argentine capital in suspense thanks to his telepathic and hypnotic powers.
Leaving aside his surname of mysterious sonority - Onofroff -, we don't know much about him. His first name will change over the years, in each city the newspapers will attribute a different one to him: Henry, Enrique, Augusto, Gaspodin, etc.
Even today, more than a hundred years after his first visit to the American territories, it is difficult for us to reconstruct his history. Born in 1863 in Italy -although some will say that he was actually Catalan-, he died in the late 1930s. Newspaper coverage of successful shows in England (towards the end of the 1880s),in Spain (several times during the first two decades of the last century) and in many Latin American countries, they allow us to make contact with a multiplicity of portraits, interviews and chronicles of one of the most famous conjurers of the turn of the century. But from this accumulation of data and images it is almost impossible to deduce a unique or coherent story. A lucky master of masks, Onofroff left behind a scattering of contradictory clues about his past, his training or his designs. In a dialogue with a journalist from Buenos Aires, he will say that he had learned the use of hypnosis when he was a medical student, but years later, during one of his remembered Spanish tours, he will say that these skills had been acquired when he was a merchant marine in high seas.
Onofroff's arrival in Buenos Aires apparently marked the beginning of his tours of the Continent. Although he would not return to the Argentine capital, he did visit various Latin American countries in subsequent years. In Peru and Colombia he performed his shows in 1917. In Chile he was twice (in 1898 and 1913). The same happened with Mexico; a first visit took place in 1900, and a second took place in 1917. The illusionist traveled through the cities always with the same show, which consisted of sections on "divination of thought" and hypnotism.
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