Flickering images, floating signifiers
Optical Innovation and Visual Piety in Senegal
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4317494 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Allen F Roberts (0000-0001-9024-1542), Mary Nooter Roberts |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 4-31 |
| Publication date | 2008-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Material Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1743-2200 • E-ISSN: 1751-8342 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2752/175183408x288113 |
| OpenAlex | W2083832402 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 25 |
A Sufi movement of Senegal known as the Mouride Way possesses a vibrant visual culture made manifest in all manner of popular, devotional, and healing arts. Portraits of Sheikh Amadou Bamba (1853–1927), the saint around whose writings and life lessons the Mouride movement has been created, appear in every imaginable medium, but all are derived from the only known photograph of Bamba, taken by French colonial authorities in 1913. In 2003, lenticular images of the saint were introduced as an optical technology new to Mourides. Astonishingly enough, one of these shifts from a portrait of Bamba to an image of “the Prophet as a boy,” underscoring their spiritual proximity. This latter picture has been traced back to a photograph of a Tunisian boy taken around 1904 by the Orientalist Rudolph Lehnert and published in a 1914 issue of National Geographic. Despite such history, visual hagiography has it that the portrait was drawn by a sixth-century Syrian monk named Bahira. When Bahira encountered Muhammad as a 12-year-old boy, he recognized that he would become the Prophet, and Bahira is now assumed to have limned Muhammad's likeness. From these ancient times the image has somehow floated to contemporary Iran, where it is said to have been a favorite of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and on to Senegal. Some Mourides are uncomfortable with portrayal of the Prophet in this manner, and especially as a lenticular image flickering between His picture and that of Amadou Bamba; yet the image does exist, and it raises intriguing intellectual and spiritual issues broached here
Art · Art history · Piety · Visual arts · African history and culture studies · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Philosophy · Religious studies
Photographs Objects Histories
Embodying Charisma
The Colonial Harem
The Sacred Gaze
Modernity at large
Anthropology, art, and aesthetics
Les portraits du Prophète Mahomet à Byzance et ailleurs
A Saint in the City
When Old Technologies Were New
Entangled objects
The Icons of Their Bodies
Islamic Art and Spirituality
Voir la ville invisible
The Memory of the Eyes. Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity
Deciphering the Signs of God
White Society in Black Africa
Mystical Graffiti and the Refabulation of Dakar
Venerating the veronica
The Power of Images
Visual Piety
Film, Ethnography, and the Senses
The Corporeal Image
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,24 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2021 (13) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |