The Evangelical Outpost has some insights on the importance of the image. The Reuters debacle, with the photoshopped smokes (rubber stamp tool) sent a wave of skepticism about newspapers and their photographs. There is really nothing new in this. Images have been used as much to instruct and inform as to manipulate and deceive.
But, the blogger goes on to quote David Boorstein, author of "The Image":
By a diabolical irony the very facsimiles of the world which we make on purpose to bring it within our grasp, to make it less elusive, have transported us into a new world of blurs. |
In other words, do images make the world more real to us, or less so? Does a photograph of Niagara Falls replace the real thing? Does it bring it closer to us?
More interestingly, though, something which The Evangelical Outposter didn't pick up on, how about all those Christian imagery we have, all the pietas, all the crucifixions, all the scenes from the Gospels? This is very different from idolatry, since these images are not to be worshipped, but act as a way of reminding us of those stories and episodes of the New and Old Testaments.
But do they bring us closer to God, or are they mere blurring effects?
The evolution in Christianity has always been to have less and less representational imagery, and depend more on the experienced reality of Christ.
I'm not sure if this is a good thing, since the efforts of a great artist who depicts these scenes is not only to represent reality, but to transmit some of its holiness and awesomeness as well.
But, maybe, just a simple, undecorated, unglamorous Church does a better job of allowing us to experience that reality. Perhaps praying in the Sistine Chapel could be a challenge – the beauty of those paintings might actually blur and compete with our real experience of God.