The Stranger, the Tears, the Photograph, the Touch Divine Presence in Spain and Europe since 1500 / William A. Christian, Jr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Christian, William A., 1944-

Standardized Title:

Divine presence in Spain and Western Europe, 1500-1960

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spirituality.

Western Europe.

Spain.

Genre:

Church history.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource)

Place of Publication:

New York : Central European University Press, 2017.

Summary:

This book is an expanded, larger-format, and more highly illustrated version of a smaller book released by CEU Press in 2011. It presents and comments on an extensive set of religious and personal photographs and illustrations that depict people along with divine beings or absent loved ones. First, Christian examines the periodic appearances of Christ-like strangers in the Spanish countryside through the vision of a woman in La Mancha in 1931. Then he considers the long history of images with liquids on them not only for early modern Spain, but also in the United States, Italy and France in the 1940s and 1950s. The third and most extensive chapter addresses the iconography of illustrated depictions of divine and spirit beings in conjunction with humans and how its conventions were incorporated into commercial postcards and personal photographs, culminating in photo montages of families and their absent soldiers in World War I. The fourth theme is new to this edition. It compares the electric moments in Spanish communities when people ritually come into physical contact with saints and with animals, or transform themselves into saints or animals for ritual purposes. Over 50 of the color photographs by Spain's preeminent documentary photographer, Cristina García Rodero, are included.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Toribia del Val and the Mysterious Wayfarer of Casas de Benítez

Chapter 2 Images as Beings Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Chapter 3 Presence, Absence, and the Supernatural in Postcard and Family Photographs, Europe, 1895–1920

Chapter 4 Juxtapositions: Saints, Humans, Animals in Spanish Fiestas, with Photographs by Cristina García Rodero

Summing Up

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Originally published under title: Divine presence in Spain and Western Europe, 1500-1960 : visions, religious images, and photographs. Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2012.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-003-72314-4

615-5225-41-9

9781003723141

OCLC:

974912819