Dawn of the Smart Phone

Portraits & Figure By Nancy E. Polo

Print based on a photomontage by Nancy Polo. The artist took this photo of Erastus Dow Palmer's sculpture entitled The Dawn of Christianity (1855), and combined it with photograph of her own phone. This image is layered with problematic iconography. The original sculpture was created as a paean to Christian conversion of the Indigenous peoples of North America. A nubile native woman is portrayed holding a cross. Her semi-nudity is a symbol of her wild nature. As a voyeur, the spectator is privileged with a glimpse of her unfettered innocent beauty upon the moment of her conversion. After she is fully indoctrinated she will no longer be semi-dressed, but fully transformed in dress and manners to a proper Christian. The sculptor has captured an ephemeral moment between two worlds for the viewing pleasure of his (most likely) privileged, white Christian male audience. By replacing the cross with a smart phone, enabled with its own lens, artist Nancy Polo is taking back the gaze. Is this young woman taking a clandestine picture of you? Is she simply answering her own questions with her smart device? Or has she just discovered a new toy that will simultaneously end her innocence and ignorance?