Wondering why photographs of people are so precious
I graduated from Hopkins with a Ph.D. in Byzantine art and architecture and then turned my research efforts to the history of photography. On the face of it, that is a radical career jump. But Byzantium, in particular the Byzantine icon and the justifications for the icon intrigued me. The proper (working) icon had to bear a resemblance to the saint represented and had to be made "in the right way." Then there was a special kind of icon that was not made by human hands (acheiropoieta), images that miraculously appeared (the earliest example may have been the Veil of Veronica, an imprint of the face of Jesus left when Veronica used her veil to blot away the sweat on the face during the march to Golgatha). The icon, a representation rather than an idol, seemed to enjoy a special identity with the person represented. I wondered if any post-Byzantine European civilization shared a belief in this very powerful kind of image and one day it hit me that the ge