Page - 82 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

82 | Philippe Bornet www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 ages keeps reasserting a specific notion of global progress (simultaneously religious, cultural, and scientific), with the viewers implicitly located at its apex, whatever their social position in their own society. Conclusion In his study of the role of images in the conquest of Mexico, Serge Gruzinski contrasts the “image-signifying” or “image-memory” with the “image-sig- nified” or “image-miracle”: while the first type of image had a simple ped- agogical value, the second was performative.46 He highlights the fact that missionaries did all they could to present Christian iconography – such as the Virgin Mary – as signifiers of something else. The volume examined here certainly pursues a “war of images” of its own on two levels: while some of the published images, such as those of Hindu gods, originated as “im- age-miracles” (having themselves a religious function), they were neutral- ised and disenchanted, recoded into the language of images as mnemonic tools.47 At the same time, the volume displays an opportunistic use of the medium of engravings to produce an ad hoc visual depiction of the world that was suitable for edifying a broad and young European (German) view- ership, even in competition with alternative media – such as photography – that would soon become mainstream. Despite this general editorial intention, however, the genesis of specific images shows the ambiguity of their trajectory. While added elements with propagandistic purpose are quite easy to figure out, other visual artefacts lend themselves to various readings as either co-produced by Indian and Eu- ropean artists or showing scenes (such as the portrait of Pandurangashram, above fig. 22) in which the represented persons had interests that did not necessarily overlap with missionary propaganda. Aggregating decontextu- alised pictures from various sources and removing the represented topics 46 Gruzinski 2001, 66: “An image of the Virgin was not God, no more than it could be confused with the Virgin herself. It was only an instrument of remembrance and memory. The Christian west had long known of this pedagogical and mnemonic function assigned to the image.” 47 See Morgan 2005, 115–146: “If the missionaries destroyed and buried images, the Child’s Paper exhumed and reinstalled them as ‘idols’, a cherished Jewish, Muslim, and Christian category of image that served not only to police the borders of cultures but also often to justify violent assaults against what this article described as ‘debased, ignorant worship’.” (168).