What is it about?
A wealth of photographers who explore the Bible in their images, with over 50 images represented: the book features works by 20 living photographers, including David LaChapelle, Josef Koudelka, Alinka Echeverría, Andres Serrano, Bettina Rheims, Adi Nes, Garry Fabian Miller, Kieran Dodds, Barbara Kruger, and more. It also spotlights historical images such as Dorothea Lange’s 'Migrant Mother', Francis Frith’s landscape photographs with the first Bible to feature photographic prints, Sister Mary Corita Kent’s instructions for using photography with the Psalms, Thomas Merton’s contemplative still life photographs, and the satirical zine collages of John Heartfield. Along with images, the book draws on photography theorists such as Roland Barthes and John Berger to reveal the religious dimensions of their photographic looking – from credulous, to critical, to sceptical. With the help of recent biblical reception scholars too, especially those working in studies of the visual arts, the changing faces of Christendom are seen through an interested lens and the Bible is exposed as contemporary visual theology.
Featured Image
Photo by Maxim Berg on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Photography was born and grew up in the increasingly secular West, and has become the ubiquitous visual language of our time: we have never invested more in the truth of its images. Yet understandings of how we practice belief in the medium are lacking. What do photographs say about faith and truth? How have the places, people, and ideas of Christian theology filtered into photographic vision? This book explores the spiritual depths of visual realism through the lens of biblical imagination.
Perspectives
A study which was 12 years in the making, I've scoured the lengths and breadths of libraries, archives, museums and books for image-makers who bring their ideas about religion to photography. Looking at these images, I distilled 4 ways of understanding such ideas - 4 aspects of index, icon, tableau, and vision which show up the spiritual in the photograph. These, I hope, are tools and vocabulary with which to bring the meta more fully into the frame.
Dr Sheona Beaumont
King's College London
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Bible in Photography, January 2024, Bloomsbury Academic,
DOI: 10.5040/9780567706553.
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