Panoramic Vision: Consolidating the Early Mormon Gaze
Large painted panorama displays offered Latter-day Saints ways of capturing the spirit of Joseph Smith, who was appearing to church members immediately following his assassination in 1844. Although they were at times consoling, revenant Smiths were also threatening, since they bolstered claims to au...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
[2020]
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| In: |
Material religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 16, Issue: 5, Pages: 639-664 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Mormon Church
/ Smith, Joseph 1805-1844
/ Appearance
/ Diorama
/ Visualization
/ Festlegung
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| RelBib Classification: | KBQ North America KDH Christian sects |
| Further subjects: | B
panorama
B Media Studies B Visual Culture B Mormon studies B hauntology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Large painted panorama displays offered Latter-day Saints ways of capturing the spirit of Joseph Smith, who was appearing to church members immediately following his assassination in 1844. Although they were at times consoling, revenant Smiths were also threatening, since they bolstered claims to authority by potential successors. Caught and panoramarized, the image of Smith and the church’s past could help consolidate power during a crisis of succession by creating a network of visual memories for collective consumption. Panorama also provided a means to conceptualize and describe visionary experience itself. Unlike the imagined community of print, panorama displays brought church members together physically to share a unique and standardized vision of Smith and church history that supported Brigham Young’s claim to leadership. As an affective entertainment, Mormon panorama capitalized on the connection to nineteenth-century attempts to simulate travel across time and space. Like trains and steamboats, panorama could signal trajectory. With a unified vision of the prophet and past, the medium of panorama experientially conveyed the sense that the church had clear direction going forward. |
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| ISSN: | 1751-8342 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Material religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2020.1847762 |