Defense of Diego Vidart Destouet's doctoral dissertation

“Based on true events. The Photographic Era of the Holy Shroud”

Directors: Carlos Chocarro Bujanda and Javier Ortiz-Echagüe Trujillano

"Based on Real Events: The Photographic Era of the Holy Shroud" is a doctoral research project within the Applied Creativity program that examines how, between 1898 and 1978, photography replaced the physical relic as the central object of scientific analysis and devotion.

Building on the discovery by the Italian lawyer and amateur photographer Secondo Pia, who in 1898 observed that the negative of the Shroud revealed a positive image of a face previously invisible to the naked eye, this study traces a genealogy from ancient theories of vision to the consolidation of the modern photographic gaze. The concept/category of “second-degree achiropoiesis” is introduced, explaining how the camera, through its technical automatism and the theological promise of the negative, became an instrument of divine revelation.

Through a mapping of controversies, this study examines the heated scientific debates in Europe (1898–1939) and the solitary, peripheral research of Juan Chabalgoity in Uruguay (1940–1978). The work demonstrates that the photographic regime naturalized technical mediation, allowing empirical science and religion to articulate an unprecedented framework of mutual validation through reproducible images, while studying an object that remained perpetually absent.