These eight images were taken abroad, over a large span of time.
Religion is a construct, a metaphor for making sense of and orienting to the world. It is a story, and it also plays out in our lives. As such, religion is simultaneously spiritual and physical. The images religion produces are but descriptions of an intangible. Yet, the bodily presence can become even grotesque; the statue spewing vomit, a memory that intrudes.
We are in a cathedral kneeling with mother at the pew. With this action of kneeling, we enter into the process of generations, we can not ever fully understand. When an image recurs in this manner our instinct is to speak about it, but we are never able to fully describe it, and our speech becomes tangled.
The two most satirical pictures in this series, 'one way' and the umbrella-refraction-before-cathedral, puncture the solemnity of the religious feeling. We stumble on humor in the unexpected place.
The constant contrasting of religion's contexts of pure-innocence and guilt causes the conversation to slip, into an unnameable other real, an existence which cannot be named.
And the photographer throws up a mirror, creating refraction.
An echo, hall of mirrors, Borges infinite Library.
-M.N.
Religion is a construct, a metaphor for making sense of and orienting to the world. It is a story, and it also plays out in our lives. As such, religion is simultaneously spiritual and physical. The images religion produces are but descriptions of an intangible. Yet, the bodily presence can become even grotesque; the statue spewing vomit, a memory that intrudes.
We are in a cathedral kneeling with mother at the pew. With this action of kneeling, we enter into the process of generations, we can not ever fully understand. When an image recurs in this manner our instinct is to speak about it, but we are never able to fully describe it, and our speech becomes tangled.
The two most satirical pictures in this series, 'one way' and the umbrella-refraction-before-cathedral, puncture the solemnity of the religious feeling. We stumble on humor in the unexpected place.
The constant contrasting of religion's contexts of pure-innocence and guilt causes the conversation to slip, into an unnameable other real, an existence which cannot be named.
And the photographer throws up a mirror, creating refraction.
An echo, hall of mirrors, Borges infinite Library.
-M.N.
Rome, 1967.
Portugal, 1991.
Unknown.
Rome, 1966.
Mexico, 1963.
Florence, 2007. 
Portugal, 1991.
Rome, 1966.
Portugal.
Portugal, 1991.
No comments:
Post a Comment