Folklorists will recognize the strategy of reading images as cultural texts in Rachel McBride Lindsey’s A Communion of Shadows. In fact, many of Lindsey’s theoretical strategies will be familiar to folklorists, including her rejection of the term “vernacular religion,” which she sets aside “in order to find a more nimble field of inquiry that lingers on specific objects in relation to authorizing discourses without positing fixed arenas of action or conviction” (13). Nonetheless, Lindsey does discuss “vernacular photography” as well as religious belief in everyday life (6). She discusses the assumptions we make about historical photographs based in contemporary subjectivities. The meanings that nineteenth-century photographers and their subjects made from these images were nostalgic and ideological rather than attempts to document the present moment. Through discussion of five kinds of nineteenth-century photography, Lindsey argues that photography and religious belief shaped one another. Photographs became tangible relics of an ephemeral past, allowing for communion with the shadows of past experiences and deceased loved ones. She argues that the examples of these photographs may offer new ways of defining religion altogether.
In chapter 1, Lindsey discusses family Bibles and the portraits they contained. She also discusses notions of “likeness.” Photographs are literal “likenesses” of those whom they depict. For those whom Lindsey documents, “likeness” was also a description of one’s spiritual character, as a reflection of closeness with God. In a related vein, documenting lineage by means of photography had racial undertones. When Bibles were produced with spaces for family photographs, they became opportunities for a “living hagiography” in which portraits became records of “inherited character” in addition to being family heirlooms (58).
Chapter 2 discusses the profound impact that the Civil War had on American photography. Those who went to war would leave photographs behind with their families, and likewise, would take photographs of their loved ones with them. The images left behind were used as memento mori, prompting meditations on both earthly sorrow and the afterlife (66). Photographs became stand-ins for loved ones, reinforced by locks of hair. Infant mortality was high during this time, and it was common for families to take photos holding the bodies of their deceased children. Sorrow was contextualized as a religious experience, and portraits began to be distributed at funerals during this time. While Lindsey is careful to say that both photography and hairwork were not used as formal religious relics in Protestant traditions, they functioned similarly in vernacular belief systems (101).
Chapter 3 chronicles the career of William H. Mumler and his alleged photographs of ghosts. Mumler’s art dovetailed with the rise of Spiritualism in the United States. He was eventually arrested for fraud, but he was not charged, as his photographs were determined to be evidence of belief—certainly for his customers—rather than deception. Lindsey points to the debate between empiricism and belief in the intangible in the American consciousness. While Mumler’s photographs were mocked by such public figures as P.T. Barnum, they nevertheless were deeply comforting for those who sought his services. These viewers looked to the tangible photograph to see the intangible that lay beyond.
Chapters 4 and 5 discuss two different contexts in which photography was used to illustrate the Bible in the nineteenth century. Chapter 4 tells the story of the landscape artist Robert Edward Mather Bain, who was commissioned by a publisher to photograph the Holy Land in 1894. Lindsey skillfully illustrates how Bain’s photos were meant to create the impression of a romantic landscape unchanged since the time of Christ rather than a bustling Ottoman Empire with bicycles and parasols. When people were positioned in Bain’s photographs, they were meant to convey symbolism relevant to Anglo-Protestant viewers.
Chapter 5 details the photography of Elmer and Brent Underwood who also traveled to Palestine. They produced stereographs—newer and better-quality images—rather than daguerreotypes. Lindsey writes that where “Bain’s photographs had created relics of the biblical past for Americans to behold, through the stereoscope, the bodies of beholders were themselves lifted from their corporeal frame and planted in the land of the Bible” (211).
These images facilitated “real” experiences for viewers just like the images of death and mourning. Lindsey discusses how the contexts of viewers shaped the way they viewed these images, especially religious messages from the pulpit, the Bible, and the commentary published with the photographs themselves. As such, viewers’ interpretations of the images could be divergent.
Lindsey concludes the book by discussing the ability of people to take their own photographs in the twentieth century, thanks to Kodak. She argues that the “moral framework” of contemporary photography has its roots in the preceding century with pictures being used to verify truth, spiritual or otherwise (240). Today, photographs may also be elevated to the level of art. Photography today, as in the past, is difficult to interpret without cultural context.
My greatest criticism of this book is that Lindsey’s writing is not always clear. While her subject matter is deeply theoretical, sentences like this one hinder rather than illuminate her meaning: “To the extent that historians, too, encounter this traffic in objects—in museums, archives, attics—this book is also an exercise in disciplining historically conditioned sensorial economies to avert misapprehension of artifacts encountered in attics and archives” (6). For those who persevere through the forest of her prose, however, there are riches to be gained. Her points about the framework of belief and morality surrounding photographs are well-made. Folklorists will recognize her emphasis on personal experience in the act of meaning-making. Lindsey’s greatest strength is in her ability to recreate scenes from history. She has scrupulously consulted memoirs, archives, and literature to reconstruct the lived experiences of those depicted in her photographs. She is an engaging storyteller.
This book is certainly recommended for folklorists, particularly those concerned with empiricism and belief. It is also recommended for those in religious studies, history, American studies, Christian theology, and photography.
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[Review length: 977 words • Review posted on November 15, 2018]