Picturing Heaven in Early China

In Picturing Heaven in Early China,a consideration of the symbolism of Heaven in early Chinese culture,Lillian Lan-ying Tseng examines the evolution of a pictorial language for the expression of "religious" ideals.By analyzing the architectural,material and literary evidence from the Han dynasty,the author traces the trajectory of Han thought from its first concerns with the notion of Heaven and the involvement of the emperor,to the growing desire for personal immortality at all levels.The book comprises five chapters,which plot the development of Han thought and images of heaven.This is a complex and well-researched examination,whose depth and detail can only be suggested here.     

Picturing the poor: fundraising and the depoliticisation of homelessness

In this paper, we discuss the role images play in attracting charitable donations in an English homeless shelter. Focusing in particular on two image-based projects which feature service-users (one series of black-and-white still photography and one series of film clips posted on YouTube), we draw on interviews with fundraisers and the homeless participants themselves to discuss how they motivated their involvement and what impact they hoped the images would achieve. We conclude by providing some snapshots of how earlier images produced in the shelter have been circulated.     

Picturing Pasargadae: Visual Representation and the Ambiguities of Heritage in Iran

For Graham Seal

This paper probes the relationship between visual representations and visitation practices at Pasargadae, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Iran. Presenting a systematic analysis of publicly available online images of Pasargadae, the paper examines the complex relationship between the place and its visual representations. Through analysis, the paper elaborates on a sense of intimacy that, while grounding Pasargadae, is also a potential common ground in pre-Islamic heritage in which the Iranian state and society could at once meet and contest versions of identity. Examining this relationship facilitates reflections into both heritage and the peculiarities of its visual representation in the Iranian context.     

Picturing the city: young people's representations of urban environments

Urban environments form the setting of everyday life for most Western young people. This article explores visual representations of cities made by young people in a range of environments within four countries. The findings inform a larger study on urban geographies within geography education. We analyse students' drawings of cities regarding physical characteristics, activities and issues. There are many commonalities between drawings from the four countries, the majority showing a ‘big, busy city’ representation with skylines, traffic and shopping areas. There are also distinctive characteristics for each set, for example Finnish students tended to emphasise environmental and social issues more than in the other countries. In relation to methodology, we conclude that drawings, supported by contextual information, are a useful source to understand young people's representations of cities. Further, this research supports thinking about how to merge young people's experiences and imaginaries with the teaching of urban geography.     

Picturing the homeland: geography and national identity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in geography as an ideologically loaded discourse about the world and its inhabitants which has operated both within and beyond educational institutions. Particular attention has been paid to the complex relationships between geography and imperialism, militarism and nationalism. For the most part, these studies have focused on the development of a western geographical imagination in Europe and North America. This article considers the development of geography in Iran during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and charts some of the connections between this new spatial sensibility and an emerging Iranian nationalism. Based on rare and hitherto unexplored nineteenth-century Persian sources, including several newspaper images, this article examines the importance which Iranian statesmen and diplomats in the service of the Qajar dynasty attached to geography and to geographical reasoning in their attempts to protect their authority from external threats. The forms of Iranian geography which developed in this period sustained various myths and legends about Persia's historic importance and reflected both external, western ideas and concepts as well as indigenous, Persian traditions. Forged in a context of acute vulnerability to «Great Power» incursions, Iranian nationalism and Iranian geography both represented an intermingling of external, western and internal, non-western ideas.     

Picturing Feminism,Selling Liberalism: The Case of the Disappearing Holbein

Responding to recent scholarly and activist discussions of the public museum as a site of anti-feminism, this article examines the historical development of ‘feminist museology’ in Britain. Focusing on the mystery and controversies surrounding an anonymous woman’s gift of Hans Holbein’s Christina of Denmark to the National Gallery in 1909, this study investigates the dynamic of art, gender, and citizenship during the prewar Liberal crisis. The Holbein debates marked an important shift in the institutional status of feminism and the gendered parameters of cultural property, and offer a new perspective on our own practices of heritage and patrimony.     

Picturing Confessional Politics at the Stuart Court: Henrietta Maria and Catherine of Braganza†

The deep confessional tensions in Stuart Britain were embodied in its Catholic queens. Queens, in their portraits and in the artworks in their palaces and chapels, were positioned within this dialectic, with the competing expectations of their husbands, their families, their religious retinues, the papacy, their own personal devotions, and the public against a changing political situation. This article examines how the visual arts provided a powerful tool for Henrietta Maria and Catherine of Braganza in this dynamic, both in claiming and facilitating piety and in advancing the Catholic cause. The themes of Catholic devotion and saintly embodiment are discussed through two important aspects of their engagement with the visual arts: palace display in which devotional works were hung prominently and portraits in which the queens embody saintly guises. Artworks from their chapels, too, will be considered; these spaces were dominated by Marian imagery, which suited both theological and dynastic interests. Although operating within different political contexts and personal agendas, they marshalled such imagery to promote the Catholic cause and perform their piety.     

Huang,Shih-shan Susan,Picturing the True Form. Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China

Susan Huang＇s Picturing the True Form： Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China is an important addition to the current bibliography of Daoist studies. The book is a scholarly investigation into the formulation of the rich visual vocabulary and diverse formats used to express the complex and manifold corpus of Daoist beliefs and practices. Prominent among these is the challenge of finding the means to pictorially convey the ever-changing true form, or zhenxing,     

Picturing inclusive places in segregated spaces: a participatory photo project conducted by migrant women in Sweden

This article uses participatory photography to explore contradictory processes of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Sweden. Our aim is to analyse the social relations that shape the kinds of places recently arrived migrant women experience as ‘safe’, as well as their everyday experiences of inclusion and exclusion. The use of photography – wherein the women choose how, when and where to shoot photos – helps us highlight what otherwise would not be immediately evident with regard to the experience of such places. We argue that there are inclusive places in segregated spaces, and that issues of ethnic inclusion and exclusion are linked to ethnic hegemony and other relationships of power. Drawing on theories of relational space in general, and transgressive space in particular, we demonstrate that our informants' daily existence is simultaneously integrated and segregated, included and excluded, and that emancipatory processes that are already under way must be allowed to proceed if the social landscape of integration is to be an open and equal one.