Page - 81 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

Unruly Images | 81www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 conceptions”43associated with it.44 The inclusion of such images republished from non-religious publications, such as Le Tour du Monde, without a clear relation to any evangelical or missionary agenda, anticipated a demand for exoticism from the viewership. These representations allowed viewers to travel without travelling, communicating a subtext on relations between modern metropolitan and distant contexts. As Peter Osborne noted about travel photographs, by “mediating between the private and the global”, pic- tures had the implicit effect of providing “middle-class viewers with the means of identifying themselves in and with [a] global system”.45 This in- terpretation is also relevant in the present case since the collection of im- 43 Originally published in the Calwer Missionsblatt 12, 1866, 89. 44 For example: Anonymous 1884, 10: “The Hindus consider this magnificent alpine world to be the special domain of their god Siwa and his cruel wife Kali.” Note Brooke 2010: “One of the dichotomies of missionaries’ descriptions of India was the contrast of its natural beauty with its inhabitants’ sinful nature, which prevented them from recognising it as a work of God’s will. One LMS missionary – again describing the beauties of the picturesque Hooghly – urged his young readers to pity and pray for the heathen of Bengal, who had access to such majesty but were too ‘depraved’ to properly appreciate it.” 45 Osborne 2000, 56. Fig. 25: Panel 43, “The Ganges river region”, “Basharatpur (near Gorakhpur)”, Bilder-Tafeln, Calwer Verlagsverein.43