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Postmodern icons
For millennia people of faith have used icons as windows on the eternal, as a medium that confronts the viewer with the Holy. An orthodox bishop in the ninth century spoke of them in these terms;
“What the Gospel tells us by the word, the icon announces to us by colours and makes present to us...the icon does not demonstrate anything but shows it.”
The modernist invention of the photograph made similar claims to bringing distant realities close, with one critic suggesting,
“The main distinction between a painting and a photograph is that the painting alludes to its content, whereas the photograph summons it, from wherever and whenever, to us.”
This website explores the potential of the photographic image to act as a post-modern icon, which sheds light on our modern world, reveals truth and can move the viewer to action.
For millennia people of faith have used icons as windows on the eternal, as a medium that confronts the viewer with the Holy. An orthodox bishop in the ninth century spoke of them in these terms;
“What the Gospel tells us by the word, the icon announces to us by colours and makes present to us...the icon does not demonstrate anything but shows it.”
The modernist invention of the photograph made similar claims to bringing distant realities close, with one critic suggesting,
“The main distinction between a painting and a photograph is that the painting alludes to its content, whereas the photograph summons it, from wherever and whenever, to us.”
This website explores the potential of the photographic image to act as a post-modern icon, which sheds light on our modern world, reveals truth and can move the viewer to action.