Page - 61 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Unruly Images | 61www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 ous. The collection included visual elements showing a great variety of sub- jects and although some clearly reflect an evangelical (and critical) attitude towards local cultures, others do not echo such a polemical Christian per- spective. Similarly, while the reproduction of wood engravings exclusively contributed to the book’s homogeneity, the genealogies of specific images are highly diverse: sources range from sketches drawn by European or local artists to traditional local iconography and photographs. Organisation of the Volume Extracting pictures from their original settings in order to print them next to each other, the editors of the Bilder-Tafeln made decisions about selection and organisation. These choices created an implicit interpretative frame- work by arranging the images into a specific order, creating a categorisa- tion into specific “panels” (each displaying 8 to 10 engravings), and placing other images as neighbours. The table of contents is striking in reflecting a particular conception of world history (fig. 3). Organised by continent, it is conceived as moving gradually from the known, local, and Christian to the more foreign and other. The book opens on a presentation of Europe, which is represented by the Reformers and by a selected number of images depicting the landscapes of England, France, and the German region of Württemberg. Immediately after these introductory panels (seven out of a total of 178), the book goes both eastwards and backwards in time, first illustrating places in Palestine and Syria mentioned in the Bible. This thematic imbalance quickly suggests that the real subject of the volume is certainly not the “entire world”, but rather the “exotic” and extra-European world. Leaving the Near East, the work then approaches India from the west, followed by Sri Lanka, China, and Japan. After a few pages about Africa, the Americas are shown with no mention of recent American history, such as the Civil War, but with an exclusive focus on native people, that is Inuit, native North Americans, and native South Americans. The book concludes with pictures of Australia and Melanesia. With the volume’s organisation strongly reminiscent of a Hegelian con- ception of world history, it is not surprising that only Europe is represent- ed through actual historical figures. This approach is certainly not specific to this publication: the treatment of non-European cultures, in particular Africa and Asia, in western school material very often reveals a hierarchis-