A Medium’s Holy Grail

“By and large, photography operates as a secular medium,” a New York critic and teacher of photography, Max Kozloff, wrote in an article about the role of photography in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Mr. Kozloff’s statement is true. The medium does not seem to lend itself to religious expression the way music and poetry do, perhaps because music is so apt for dealing with the ineffable, and poetry for discussing abstractions and elevated thoughts. The other plastic arts, painting and sculpture, are more capable of handling overtly religious themes, as even a brief visit to the Renaissance section of any creditable museum will show: Gold-leaf halos are placed around the heads of ordinary humans to idealize them into saints, wings are added for angels, and miracles are easily accomplished. But photography can occasionally be put to religious uses, as illustrated by three current exhibitions at the Center for Jewish History.