Image Making

more from my readings

No such tradition exists for portraits of Christ. Images of him may therefore be said to be pure projections in the psychological sense; that is, inventions corresponding to what people needed or wanted from him…But once they “imagined” Christ, he became what people pictured him to be. The translation of the Gospels from Greek to Latin altered their content only very marginally; the translation of the Gospels from literature into visual images profoundly affected their content. Images are not neutral; they are not just stories put into pictures….Images not only express convictions, they alter feelings and end up justifying convictions.

Mathews, 1993: Thomas Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christina Art, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, 11