Ada Emma Deane was a British Spiritualist medium and one of the most prominent practitioners of spirit photography in the early twentieth century. Having worked as a domestic servant and charwoman, she began experimenting with photography in 1920, producing her first purported spirit photograph in June of that year. Her work quickly attracted the attention of Spiritualist circles, including Neuman Rist, president of the Hackney Society of Spiritualists, whose association with Deane is documented through photographs of Rist and his family accompanied by supposed spirit bodies

Deane also attracted the support of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an enthusiastic advocate of Spiritualism, who personally attended photographic sittings with her and devoted a chapter of his 1922 book The Case for Spirit Photography to defending her against allegations of fraud. Her emergence as a spirit photographer coincided with a renewed interest in Spiritualism following the First World War, as a nation mourning the loss of hundreds of thousands of servicemen increasingly sought consolation and the possibility of communicating with deceased loved ones. Spirit photography offered a seemingly tangible means of establishing such contact, and Deane's work became particularly associated with this period of national mourning, culminating in her widely circulated photographs of the Armistice Day commemorations in London.

Many of the photographs in the collection are annotated and dated on the versos by Neuman Rist, crediting Deane as the medium, photographer, and in two cases appearing as the subject. Other identified subjects include Rist himself, his daughter, a woman whom we to believe to be his wife, and Mr. Streater, a former sergeant turned clairvoyant and psychometrist, posed with his wife.