Nature photography and canonical exegesis

I seem to be able to pick up the implications of canonical exegesis everywhere I look. One of the best places for inspiration is Phaidon's The Photo Book (for other photographic Anstöße go here). The comment on the photo above reveals an interesting insight into the beneficial function of nature photography as a remedy for the human drive to objectify and possess. I think Childs' canonical approach to Scripture has a similar function within the field of biblical scholarship:

Photography, of the kind practised to perfection by Lanting, both represents and realizes nature's objects in a way which answers to and deflects our need to possess. Thus, having seen these wary birds eating their way through a drying river bank, it will be hard to imagine them as having an independent existence away from their habitat. Lanting's idea, as stated in National Geographic, where his work often appears, is: 'To turn wild creatures into ambassadors for whole ecosystems.'

I like this idea of nature photography answering to and deflecting our needs. In a similar way, when we read the Bible, we notice its foreignness and particularity. We have a need to grasp this, to make it our own by philolgical, literary, and historical analysis. This is OK; it's part of the text. But when we start grappling with this dimension, we see that the text ultimately points away from itself. The particularity of each pericope wants to draw our attention to a larger, unified reality which undergirds the whole.

This is the function of canon. No one text stands on its own, but rather dialogues with other texts in an attempt to give voice to their common source. When we catch a vision of the theological whole - the ontological unity of Scripture - it's hard to imagine each pericope (or redactional strand, or source, or gloss etc.) having an independent existence away from their literary habitat. Each work of canonical interpretation functions as an ambassdor, reminding us that the true ecosystem of the part is the canonical whole.

Photo of day: the superficiality of colour?

I found the following comment on the Léon Gimpel, the creator of this photograph, fascinating:

In 1904 Gimpel went to work for the French periodical L'Illustration, where he baceme the first reporter to make colour pictures on a regular basis. In 1907 it was Gimpel who organized the public seminar in Paris at which Louis Lumière presented the details of his newly developed autochrome colour process. Lumière's process turned out to be at least thirty years ahead of its time, since in 1907 it was thought that colour gave an unacceptable bias to reportage. Black and white dramatized events and made them susceptible to analysis, while colour made objects look opulent and encouraged people to focus on appearance rather than reality. Autochrome's suggestion was that we were luxurient materialists, and not the sort of people who could easily be mobilized on behalf of the national interest, or for any other abstract cause.

[HT to The Blue Lantern for the image]

Here's another gorgeous photo, portraying the absurdity of war:

Photo of the Day: A Sea of Steps

This cathedral (Wells), is not too far from where my family lives!

The following is the commentary on the photo taken from Phaidon's The Photo Book. I particularly like the way the commentator interweaves allegorical and literal interpretation, grounding this even in the intention of the photographer!

This picture, of the stairs leading to the Chapter House in Wells Cathedral, was always meant to be understood in terms other than purely architectural ones. The steps themselves ripple and look increasingly like waves building in an ocean as they mount towards the lighted space beyond. The stairs seen rising to the right could be a great wave on the point of breaking, thus representing a danger to the traveller or pilgrim. In the middle is a cut block of stone, symbolizing a steadfast soul put in place by the Divine Architect. The point, though, is not just that the steps look oceanic but that they have been worn that way by generations of use, until their significance had been inscribed into the very fabric of the building. Evan's tendency was always to look for a meaning already present, making him very respectful of appearances as given and thus an early advocate of 'straight' photography (142; emphasis mine).

For details of this photo go here. For other images by Frederick Evans, go here.

Photo of the Day: Child with Toy Hand Grenade

I'm currently working my way through Phaidon's The Photo Book and was struck by this picture by Diane Arbus. The commentary to the photo helped me understand why:

The grenade, grimace and claw-like hand seem to point to a desperate future, hysterical and militarized. The picture works because the strangeness of the boy is staged within a kindly natural scene: there is even a rhyme between those paired tree trunks and the child's spindly legs. Arbus's subject, here and elsewhere, is the discrepancy between imagined and idealized worlds, represented here by the trees and the sunlight in the park, and the violence apparently promised by the child. She imagined dystopia, but always regarded it from the point of view of the Garden of Eden (23)

It's interesting to compare this interpretation from the unknom Phaidon commentator with that of Wikipedia's. The former tries to grasp the photo within some kind of wider symbolic context and perhaps manages to grasp to the heart of its message. The latter interpretation, in true "historical-critical" fashion, is content to describe the surface image and tell us how the photo was taken. The result is that the power of the photo is lost in irrelevant detail.

Or is it irrelevant?

Religion as Opiate

I accidently came accross this photo in Google Image, and I love it. Without any context, I interpreted the bandage to refer to the spot where a heroin needle had been inserted, the vein forced to protude by the straps of the phylactery.

What does that say to you? I thought of it as a critique of religion, opium for the masses, a crutch which we rely on to sooth our insecurities and anxieties about the meaning of our lives. I'm 'religious' (in a way, I'm not too fond of the word), but I catch myself doing this kind of thing all the time: innoculating myself from harsh reality of my world, resting on my religion to keep me secure. The danger that religion replaces genuine faith in a God who explodes our categories and promises the impossible is something that has threatened his own people throughout their history.

In this light, I find the following quote (taken from B. Meyers' blog) from Karl Barth pertinent:

“Faith is not a ground on which we can place ourselves, not a system which we can obey, not an atmosphere in which we can breathe. Viewed from a human perspective, what was once called religion, conviction and law becomes rather the abyss, anarchy, void. But ‘the law of the faithfulness of God’ [Rom. 3:27] – which is to say, ‘the law of faith’ – is the place where only God can hold us, the place where there is nothing else but God himself, God alone.”

—Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief 1922 (Zollikon-Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1940), pp. 84-85 (English edition, p. 110).

Just some Sunday thoughts.

By the way, I later looked up the background for this photo and discovered my interpretation completely missed the mark. The photographer is a homosexual Jew struggling with HIV. Come to think about it, heroin addicts don't put bandages on after they've injected, do they?