Page - 75 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Unruly Images | 75www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 case is the figure of a mother sacrificing her child to a crocodile, seem- ingly implying that this was a common practice among Hindus (fig. 17). However, the same image was frequently printed in various missionary periodicals (fig. 18) without any specific link to India. Thus, a stereotyped representation could easily be reused in very varied settings, especially, perhaps, when the viewers were not directly acquainted with the depicted context. Portraying the Natives Some of the volume’s images parallel British colonial projects attempting to document visually the characteristics of the native population, such as People from India (1868), a large photographical project that had the goal of visually recording all the diversity of Indian cultures. The anthropometrical perspective at work in this project depersonalised the human subjects to focus on their physical characteristics. In our volume, the same perspective is perceptible in images which document the physical attributes of a specific group, tribe, or caste. Fig. 17: Panel 39, “The Ganges river region”, “A mother sacrifices her child to the alligator”, Bilder-Tafeln, Calwer Verlagsverein. Fig 18: My Picture-Book, New York: American Tract Society, 1863, 46.