Page - 57 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Unruly Images | 57www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 aspect of images, specifically analysing the relative success of “orientalist” painting in the contemporary Middle East. He identifies cultural, comic (!), and financial aspects in the revalorisation of such visuals among a Middle Eastern viewership.7 Yet more studies have analysed the translocal history of visual media and have shown that images that might seem to be reflections of a European orientalist imaginary have sometimes unexpected relations to actual images produced in the represented context, thus challenging the view of a visual Orient as a purely western creation and acknowledging the agency of local artists.8 In that sense, analysis of “orientalist images” becomes a more complicated study of how images move across spaces, be it in terms of their production, their viewership, or the other visual cultures they encounter. The present contribution explores a number of aspects of this complex transcultural framework through the study of one specific case. To do so, it focuses on the representation of Indian culture and religion in a volume dating back to the end of the 19th century and intended as a sort of global visual history. The first part presents the volume as a whole: the intend- ed audience, the content’s organisation, and most importantly, the diverse origins of the featured images. The second part analyses the volume’s sec- tion about India, looking more specifically at the representation of religious practices, missionary activity, portraits of “natives”, and the depiction of remarkable buildings or landscapes. Comparisons are offered between the volume’s images and their appearance in other editorial contexts. The con- clusion reflects on the translocal circulation of visual material and its impli- cations for the interpretation of “orientalising” processes. A Late Modern Orbis Pictus The cover of the January 1851 issue of The Missionary Magazine and Chroni- cle, a journal of the London Missionary Society (hereafter LMS), carries an engraving showing a pair of Indian twins and a caption saying, “‘John Angell James,’ and ‘George Storer Mansfield,’ the Hindoo twin orphan children” (fig. 1). The opening pages tell the story of orphan twins who had been “found, when quite infants, on the road-side” and had subsequently been 7 Pouillon 2014, 15–16. 8 For example Gruzinski 2001; Subrahmanyam 2012.