Page - 76 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

76 | Philippe Bornet www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 While the image from the Bilder-Tafeln found in Figure 19 seems entirely fabricated to fit the ideological message, with dress and hair playing the role of civilisational markers, the photograph from The People of India in Figure 20 is no less staged to convey the same message. In these cases, and in photographs as well as in drawings, the power configuration around the visual representation is strongly asymmetrical: the represented subjects are depersonalised and put to the service of an imperialist discourse which has no consideration for their interests. Though we noted above that pho- tography was often used to depict more peaceful scenes than drawings, it appears here to be yet another “tool of imperialism”.38 Such images inscribe the colonial/missionary activity into a more global narrative of civilisational progress directed through the inexorable spread of western and Christian values on a worldwide scale, reassuring the reader/viewer that he or she is actually the model to which these other societies are aspiring. 38 To echo Headrick’s 1981 classic work The Tools of Empire, on the relation between colonialism and technology. Fig. 19: Panel 53, “Telugu lands”, “Peitschi, the daughter of the snake charmer, as heathen and as Christian”, Bilder-Tafeln, Calwer Verlagsverein. Fig. 20: John Forbes Watson / John William Kaye (eds.), 1868, The People of India. A Series of Photo graphic Illustrations, London: India Office, 1868, vol. 1, 77, image 19, “Cole Christians. Aboriginal. Chota Nagpoor”.