JR Pepper: Professional Eccentric

Professional eccentric, JR Pepper, combines her love of art and bizarre history into her entertaining lectures and spooky photography. She majored in art history with a focus on female surrealists.  Today she is a Fellow and Curator, for the New York City Odd Salon, a non-profit that hosts curated talks on topics dealing with history, art, and science from 1950 or earlier. 

Pepper helps us understand that monsters are visual representations of our fears. Film serves as a medium to express those fears. Film appreciation has been part of Pepper’s life since childhood. She grew up watching 1980s horror films and obsessed over Disney’s Sleepy Hollow and Beetlejuice.  

Pepper shares the story of William H. Mumler, a Victorian photographer who claimed to be able to photograph ghosts. She highly recommends the book “The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult” (catalog from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) to anyone interested in spirit photography. Pepper enjoys doing her own spirit and cemetery photography and has used both historical and modern technologies. Those interested in weird historical photography should check out the Burns Archive. 

Pepper recommends the following places and musical group for Halloween lovers traveling to the New York City area: 

• Jekyll and Hyde Club Restaurant and Bar (https://www.jekyllandhydeclub.com) 
• Beetle House NYC Restaurant (https://beetlehousenyc.com) 
• Brooklyn’s Green-wood Cemetery (https://www.green-wood.com) 
• The World/Inferno Friendship Society (Music group, https://www.worldinferno.com) 
• The Merchant House Museum (Ghost tours and Victorian funerals, https://merchantshouse.org)  
• The Odd Salon (https://www.oddsalon.com)  

To learn more, visit her web site: http://www.girlduality.com