Whitley College is pleased to share a new publication by Associate Professor Jason Goroncy, published in the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies.
In ‘Attention, Sign-making, and the Tragic: On the Indexing of Ecological Icons in the Work of Harry Nankin’, Jason offers a rich theological reflection on how art might help us attend faithfully to the realities of ecological loss in the Anthropocene.
Engaging the work of Australian photographer Harry Nankin, the article explores how cameraless photography, using shadow, light, insects, damaged landscapes, and cosmic imagery, can function as a form of ecological iconography. Rather than slipping into either despair or false optimism, Nankin’s work holds grief and hope together, acknowledging the world’s fractured state while resisting spectacle or sentimentality.
Drawing on Jewish thought, particularly the Kabbalistic notion of tikkun olam (the repair of the world), the article considers how practices of sustained attention, humility, and ethical seeing might gesture toward repair without claiming mastery or resolution. Jason argues that this “tragic aesthetic” invites viewers into a deeper way of seeing, one that honours non-human life as meaningful, sign-bearing, and worthy of care.
This publication reflects Jason’s ongoing commitment to scholarship that is faithful, contextual, and engaged with the pressing questions of our time, where theology, ecology, art, and ethics meet.