Page - 84 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

84 | Philippe Bornet www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 55–86 Hermann Gundert’s grandson, the writer Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), came into contact with precisely this volume at an early age. Along with other artefacts and books about India which Hesse would have found in his fami- ly’s home, these engravings might have contributed to shaping some of his conceptions about Asia – conceptions that certainly cannot be described as “missionary”.50 Finally, even if many aspects of the making and transmission of pictures remain obscure and need further research, this example signals the pres- ence of an elaborated system of image manufacturing, forging, and sharing in Christian Protestant missionary contexts from the beginning of the 19th century. This system involved not only regular interactions between Protes- tant and Anglican – but not Catholic – societies in the European context, but also contacts with artists and posing subjects in the local contexts. All these aspects have to be taken into account as part of a transnational and connected history of visual practices between Asia and Europe in the 19th century. Such a “connected” history of visual material needs to acknowl- edge the power asymmetries at work, since not all actors had equal access to resources for producing and publishing visual material. This approach can work, however, as a corrective to a perspective that would be limited to a (critical) analysis of western visual representations of extra-European cultures as mere inventions of a fantasised orient.51 In 1987, a facsimile of the volume was republished as an initiative of the Calwer Verlagsverein under the title Calwer historisches Bilderbuch der Welt. The volume was sold as such, without giving any hint as to its original con- text of production. Viewers are left to their own interpretations and the images show their astonishing ability to spring to life, once again. Bibliography Anonymous, 1883a, Bilder-Tafeln zur Länder- und Völker-Kunde mit besonderer Berück- sichtigung der evangelischen Missionsarbeit, Calw: Calwer Missionsverlag. Anonymous, 1883b, Review of ‘Bilder-Tafeln zur Länder- und Völkerkunde’, Evangeli- sches Missionsmagazin 37, 224. Anonymous, 1884, Textbuch zu den Bildertafeln zur Länder- und Völker-Kunde mit be- sonderer Berücksichtigung der evangelischen Missionsarbeit, Calw / Stuttgart: Ver- lag der Vereinsbuchhandlung. 50 For a formulation of this hypothesis, which is likely but difficult to prove, see Giebenrath 2002. 51 As in Nochlin 1989, an influential but rather one-sided essay.