ABSTRACT:
Peter Nadas, who’s the great authority of the Hebrew texts and Jewish tradition and also a professional photographer, in his books examines the nature of the image and the word and the conflict between them. The seeing and the hearing constitute the basis of religious cognition, the question is the priority, which one is dominant over the other. This struggle means not only the confrontation between christian denominations (iconoclasm), even it came after the differences of cultures (visual Greek and aural Hebrew). We must also consider the problem of debated or admitted concepts like ’the age of picture’ (Belting) or the iconic turn (Boehm, Mitchell).
The characters of Nadas often use the picture and/or the word in their ancient condition and function, like creating. So nobody can associate the word, that we receive through hearing, with passivity. The voice manifests in tradition: telling family legends, in miracles: healing, and in product: diary, memoir or literary work. The ways of human creating can be painting, taking photos, glinting, even seeing visions. The eyes and ears are reception organs, but the real medium is the human body. It mediates, bequeaths, contains the phenomenons of the world, or covers up them with a role or mask. It’s able to make reproductions, variations, signification and repicturing of an Other one. |
