Page - 66 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

66 | Philippe Bornet www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 photography percolated into many circles, from higher class families to roy- alty and schools, and included representations of female subjects.29 Thus, it may be speculated that engravings based on photographs rep- resent scenes that are not as polemical as engravings based on sketches or drawings, reflecting technical constraints and often a negotiation between the photographer and the photographed subject.30 While making an engraving from a photograph might seem paradoxical, it is easily explained by both printing constraints – half-tone printing of photo- graphs only became mainstream after 189531 – and ideological message, for the process adds opportunities for intervention and removes the original personal and contextual setting, creating a distance between the viewer and the object. The decontextualizing process at work in the making of an engraving from a photograph also evokes timeless notions of exoticism and antiquity – ideas that were all central to the general worldview the book was seeking to convey.32 Imag(in)ing India and Hinduism Four main aspects of cultural diversity are highlighted by the volume, with a particular focus on religion: (1) local religious practices, (2) missionary activities as a civilising process, (3) portraits of natives, and (4) remarkable landscapes or sites with no direct connection to religion. Religion While religion is naturally a major topic throughout the Bilder-Tafeln, India is significantly (and oddly) the only region in the entire book with a dedi- cated section on religion. As expected, many images in that section reflect 29 See Karlekar 2013, 34–38. 30 Although it was still possible to ask for specific subjects to be photographed, to select the most fitting clichés, and/or to reframe photographs before publication. See Jenkins 1993, 98–101 for a few examples of the relations between the photographer Christian Hornberger, active in Ghana, and the Directorate of the North German Mission in Bremen in the second half of the 19th century and for more on the interests at stake in the selection of the photographed subjects. 31 Rice 2010. For example, the Evangelisches Missionsmagazin printed its first photograph as late as 1896. 32 See Chatterjee 2011, 23 about a similar transition from photographs to engravings in the reproduction of images of major Indian sites in schoolbooks produced in the 1950s and 1960s.