Seeing and Believing: Ellen T. Armour

Our guest, Ellen T. Armour, examines what distinguishes digital photography from its analogue predecessor and places the circulation of digital images in the broader context of virtual visual cultures. She explores the challenges and opportunities that visually saturated social media landscapes present for users and organizers.

Despite the power of digital platforms and algorithms, possibilities for disruption and resistance emerge from how people engage with these systems. Armour offers ways of seeing drawn from Christianity and found in other religious traditions to help us break with entrenched habits and rethink how we engage with the images that grab our attention.

Developing theological perspectives on the power and peril of photography and technology, her recent book Seeing and Believing provides suggestions for navigating the new media landscape that can spark what Armour calls "photographic insurrection."

Ellen T. Armour is the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Chair and Professor of Feminist Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School, where she also directs the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality. Her books include Signs and Wonders: Theology After Modernity (Columbia, 2016).