University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
312 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 54 halftones, notes, bibl., index
PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-4696-3372-5
Published: October 2017
HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1-4696-3648-1
Published: October 2017
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-4696-3373-2
Published: October 2017
From the Publisher:
When the revolutionary technology of photography erupted in American culture in 1839, it swiftly became, in the day's parlance, a "mania." This richly illustrated book positions vernacular photography at the center of the study of nineteenth-century American religious life. As an empirical tool, photography captured many of the signal scenes of American life, from the gold rush to the bloody battlefields of the Civil War. But photographs did not simply display neutral records of people, places, and things; rather, commonplace photographs became inscribed with spiritual meaning, disclosing, not merely signifying, a power that lay beyond.
Rachel McBride Lindsey demonstrates that what people beheld when they looked at a photograph had as much to do with what lay outside the frame--theological expectations, for example--as with what the camera had recorded. Whether studio portraits tucked into Bibles, postmortem portraits with locks of hair attached, "spirit" photography, stereographs of the Holy Land, or magic lanterns used in biblical instruction, photographs were curated, beheld, displayed, and valued as physical artifacts that functioned both as relics and as icons of religious practice. Lindsey's interpretation of "vernacular" as an analytic introduces a way to consider anew the cultural, social, and material reach of religion.
In collaboration with UNC Press, a companion to the book has been published with Yale University's Material and Visual Cultures of Religion Journal, providing hundreds of high-resolution digitized images and pages for students, researchers, and other visitors to engage.
REVIEWS:
A Communion of Shadows builds upon flourishing and sophisticated research on the history and theory of photography, and Lindsey successfully extends that scholarship to illustrate the deeper dimensions of this technological art…. [This book] provides a thorough examination of how nineteenth-century Americans integrated photographs and photography into their spiritual lives. — Colleen McDannell, author of Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression
A Communion of Shadows charts a strong new direction in our historical understanding of religious history. Rachel Lindsey reveals how photography altered and remade religious life in the nineteenth century, becoming intertwined with the depths of human relations and people's memories, persuasions, and sensual connections. This thoroughly researched and smartly executed study will have a long-standing impact on the study of religion. —S. Brent Plate, author of A History of Religion in 5 1/2 Objects
Rachel Lindsey opens up new avenues of investigation by linking photography to religious practice, demonstrating how religious views are shaped by the interaction between material objects and the beholder of these objects. With her sharp insight and impressive research, Lindsey accents, complements, and complicates the all-too-sparse scholarship on photography in nineteenth-century America. —Paul Gutjahr, author of The Book of Mormon: A Biography
In this important monograph, . . . . Lindsey engages the spiritual meanings of photographs as part of religious practice; the racial discourses at work through visual depictions of, for example, one’s ancestors, as in the practice of using the family Bible to hold pages of a family tree accompanied by photographic portraits; and the presentation of contemporary inhabitants of Palestine as Biblical characters. . . . This is a thoroughly researched, trenchant study of Christian America’s use of photographs, as visual and material objects, to construct narratives of personal and religious significance. —Publishers Weekly
In A Communion of Shadows, Rachel McBride Lindsey skillfully traces developments—primarily in the late nineteenth century—that contributed to [a] largely neglected aspect of religious media culture....In a refreshing way, the book treats this rich photographic collection as concrete material objects that were once beheld with particular, and often religiously inflected, techniques....[T]he overall argument and her theoretical rigor allow Lindsey’s analysis of neglected photographic media and their conditioned uses to shine once again and illuminate new paths in the study of religion, media, and history....If readers behold its chapters as earlier viewers beheld photos, the book captures lived religion becoming increasingly intertwined with photographic media practices, which required renewed navigation, engendering all manner of odd, surprising, syncretic, and modern modes of beholding. —Reading Religion