| Summary: | This article proposes a threefold framework for analyzing wayside shrines as artifacts of visual culture. Site casts shrine construction as a problem of the organization of space: a sacred space (the shrine) converges with a public space (the street). Sight defines the shrine as a visual phenomenon: a display framing an image that projects an ideological address. Cite directs attention to the semiotic operations of the image, focusing on effects of attraction and repulsion. The argument is organized in two parts. The first part is descriptive: the author presents a range of exemplary street shrines, from rudimentary (kaccha) to solid and well finished (pakka), encountered in the course of ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai. The second part takes a systematic approach to analyzing the visual relations street shrines engage in contemporary urban public space. The analysis hinges on a proposed re-theorization of visual worship, darshan, as a gesture of mutual recognition.
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