The Bible in Photography: Index, Icon, Tableau, Vision

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Sheona Beaumont addresses the untold story of biblical subjects in photography. She argues that stories, characters, and symbols from the Bible are found to pervade photographic practices and ideas, across the worlds of advertising and reportage, the book and the gallery, in theoretical discourse and in the words of photographers themselves.

Beaumont engages interpretative tools from biblical reception studies, art history, and visual culture criticism in order to present four terms for describing photography's latent spirituality: the index, the icon, the tableau, and the vision. Throughout her journey she includes lively discussion of selected fine art photography dealing with the Bible in surprising ways, from images by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 19th century to David Mach in the 21st. Far from telling a secular story, photography and the conditions of its representations are exposed in theological depth.; Beaumont skillfully interweaves discussion of the images and theology, arguing for the dynamic and potent voice of the Bible in photography and enriching visual culture criticism with a renewed religious understanding.

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The highlight of the book is the selection of images and the grappling with the literal and the spiritualthe difficulties of representing historically real persons using contemporary models, and of conveying a something more beyond the surface, an element of transcendence Theres much to savor here! * Art & Theology *

Author Bio

Dr Sheona Beaumont is a writer and artist working with photography. Her books explore the religious heritage of Christianity in the arts and visual culture, from photobooks to scholarly monographs. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at Kings College London, and has held artist/writer residencies across the UK, most recently as the Bishop Otter Scholar in Chichester, West Sussex. www.shospace.co.uk