Dear friends,
We are pleased to invite you to our upcoming conference as part of our series dedicated to photography, which will take place on October 29, 2024, at 6 PM at the Millennium Gallery.
Theme: The Shroud of Turin, the First Photographic Phenomenon in History?
The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth measuring 4.37 meters long by 1.11 meters wide, bearing the faint impressions of a front and back of a body. Considered by Catholic tradition to be the burial cloth that wrapped the body of Christ, it presents a mysterious image "not made by human hands."
Our speaker, Daniel Girardin, is a renowned art historian and photography specialist. A former curator of the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, he has organized numerous exhibitions and published books and articles on the history of photography.
During the conference, he will discuss the role of the shroud in the history of photography. In 1898, amateur photographer Secundo Pia took reproductions of the shroud and discovered spectacular details that had previously been invisible to the naked eye, sparking ongoing research into the shroud's origin, date, and whether its creation was natural or fabricated. This image remains a true enigma from scientific, philosophical, theological, and ethical perspectives. To date, no verified explanation has been found regarding the process that led to the imprint on the cloth, with each new discovery raising further questions. The shroud has thus generated extensive reflections on the nature of an image and its reception and should be understood as a mystery within the fascinating history of images in the West.
Sign up now to participate in this conference: galerie@millennium.ch.
We hope to see many of you for this evening, which promises to be both inspiring and enriching.