Esoteric Potentiality in Creating and Viewing Angel-themed Photographs
Oscar Ortiz-nieminen, Terhi Utriainen, Alexandra Bergholm
Approaching Religion December 2, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.30664/ar.161713 via OpenAlex
Summary
An article analyzes how a staged angel-themed photograph by Finnish artist Hanne Kiiveri, inspired by a waking dream of her late sister, evokes a sense of accessing the otherworldly. Using a hermeneutic framework, the study examines audience responses collected from a touring and online exhibition. It applies Egil Asprem's distinction between kataphatic (concrete) and apophatic (abstract) modes of thinking to show how viewers engage with the image. The artist draws on popularized Western esoteric tropes, and the audience commentary reflects similar cultural resources, raising questions about what photography can depict and reveal.
Study at a glance
| Design | qualitative study |
|---|---|
| Population | audiences of a touring and online exhibition |
| Key finding | The analysis of audience responses to Kiiveri's angel-themed photographs reveals that both the artist and viewers draw on kataphatic traditions of Western esotericism, illustrating different strategies of engaging with the artwork and raising onto-epistemic questions about photography. |
Abstract
This article explores esoteric potentiality—the perceived possibility of accessing the otherworldly—through a hermeneutic framework that integrates artist intent, the photographic image and audience reception. The Finnish artist Hanne Kiiveri shot her first angel-themed photograph after a waking dream involving her late sister. As part of the Whose Angels? project—an initiative that combines artistic practice with scholarly research—Kiiveri’s staged angel-themed art photographs juxtaposing fantasy and reality, the mundane and the spiritual, were presented to diverse audiences as part of a touring and online exhibition. The verbal responses collected by scholars as research material are here analysed by heuristically employing Egil Asprem’s (2016) distinction between kataphatic (concrete, affirmative) and apophatic (abstract, ineffable) modes of thinking to illustrate different strategies of engaging with the artwork. It will be argued that although Kiiveri’s artistic practice is not explicitly “hermetic” or “mediumistic”, she draws on popularised tropes and vernacularised themes derived especially from the kataphatic tradition of Western esotericism. This type of “occultural resourcing” is evident in the audience commentary as well. The analysis also raises broader onto--epistemic questions regarding photography and the photographic image: what can be pictured by photographing, and what can be seen through a photograph?