PHOTOGRAPHER'S
COMMENTs
In his essay “A Calling of Voices,” from his book The
Hungering Dark, the theologian Frederick Buechner wrote of an
aesthetic experience he witnessed on a lonely windswept beach:
…you are walking along an empty beach toward the end of the day,
and there is a gray wind blowing, and a seagull with a mussel shell
in its beak flaps up and up, and then lets the shell drop to the
rocks below, and there is something so wild and brave and beautiful
about it that you have to write it into a poem or paint it into a
picture or sing it into a song; or if you are no good at any of
these, you have to live out at least the rest of that day in a way
that is somehow true to the little scrap of wonder that you have
seen.1
From the time I read these words I realized that I had a sacred
purpose in life — a ministry — through the medium of photography. My
images could bring a little bit of light, inspiration, and sometimes
humor into a torn and battered world.
Another artist, London bookseller and photographer Frederick H.
Evans (1853-1943), spent his career in relentless search for
splendor. He made fine art photographs of many English cathedrals
and printed them on platinum paper. He regarded those and French
châteaus as places of great beauty and the proper subject matter for
his craft. For a photographic artist during the time, the search for
beauty needed no explanation. Because the medium was young, the term
“documentary”2 was not yet
apropos for photographers engaged in camera vision.
Mid-twentieth century-historians and practitioners widely accepted
three major styles of photography—pictorial, documentary, and
metaphor or equivalents. Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was often
referred to as the father of modern photography, for he cultivated
separate bodies of work in each of the categories. Debatably the
equivalents of clouds became the most important.
In the article “How I Came to Photograph the Clouds,” Stieglitz
wrote that “clouds were there for everyone – no tax as yet on them –
free.”3 The cloud series
(1925-1931), made at his family’s summer home in upstate New York’s
Lake George, suited his style. On a hill, he used a handheld 4 x 5
Graflex camera fitted with a long cardboard snoot to darken the
light in order to see the image clearly on the camera’s focusing
screen. The arrangement allowed him an angle directly overhead to
the sky without painfully bending his back, as most eye-level
viewfinder cameras would require. Though many of the pictures served
as purely documentary images used in schooling meteorologists at the
time, Stieglitz thought the images functioned principally on an
emotional level.
Considered by some to be one of the greatest composers of the
twentieth century, violinist Ernest Bloch (1880-1959), on viewing
the pictures, compared the visual works to music. Stieglitz never
said they were equivalent to music but found satisfaction in letting
each person experience whatever individual emotional response was
appropriate. He wrote in the same article “that unless one has
eyes and sees, they won’t be seen.”4
In English pubs I have visited, one can sense centuries of
interesting conversation and merriment stuck in the very fabric of
each brick and wooden table. Likewise, in the sanctuaries of
churches and synagogues, the vibrations of songs, prayers, and
comforting words offered over time stick like a coat of tacky damp
varnish on the pews and in the crevices of holy places. How many
generations have asked for healing for themselves, their children or
their aging parents? How many have found answers to their prayers
there? How many shouts of joy can one perceive in the sacred
silence? How many friendly handshakes? How many hugs? If you listen
you can imagine hearing the hushed vibrations and murmured
confessions that relieve a soul’s burdens.
A photographer’s field experience is undeniably richly filled with
memorable experiences. In Europe, during the week, curious tourists
often fill places of worship to capacity. In the United States, I
found most sanctuaries empty except on Sunday or during a wedding or
funeral.
One place in particular is Saint Michael’s Catholic Church in
Convent, the first church I photographed for this project on sacred
light. At the door, a statue of the Archangel Michael met me. The
armed figure rested his body on the handle of a wicked, twisting
sword blade. Inside, I noticed a man sweeping and carrying a trash
can. I thought he was the janitor and then realized he was a Jesuit
priest with the appearance of an everyday workman. Another time, an
excited student assistant with the camera and a tripod over his
shoulder ran up the aisle to set up a picture, exclaiming, “This is
the money shot!” More emotional was our panic as we heard the sound
of the maintenance crew locking the door, unaware that we were
inside making photographs.
Just when I felt the project was nearing completion, Hurricane
Katrina ripped the Gulf Coast apart on August 29, 2005. It hit New
Orleans especially hard with flooding that caused devastating damage
to both people and property. The loss of home and displacement of
community were heart-wrenching. Less than a month later, Hurricane
Rita slashed into nearby Cameron Parish and Lake Charles.
When the dawn shone its light on Katrina’s ravages, many south
Louisiana residents began repairing damages and removing debris
without knowing the storm had compromised the New Orleans levees and
without even suspecting the horror soon to flood the Crescent City.
The storm left tens of thousands stranded in attics, on rooftops, in
ill-prepared and storm-damaged facilities, and on the few patches of
high pavement. Their suffering flooded New Orleans as surely as the
relentless water. Many of the anguished refused rescue until their
beloved pets could accompany them.
Filmed images of the misery filled American newspapers and
television and exposed the shame of the ill-prepared response to the
world.
I had been photographing the interiors of churches and synagogues
for seven years prior to the Katrina. This was the contrast, the
shadow side I was looking for. However, I could not bring myself to
make photographs in New Orleans for more than a year after the
storm. There had been too much pain, too many photographs of the
damage.
It took courage for me to enter the city for the first time after
the hurricane. Then, to hear the stories of people who had lost
their communities took even more courage. People needed to tell
their stories and needed others to listen as part of the healing
process.
More than six feet of filthy water completely devastated Beth Israel
Synagogue on Canal Street. Congregants risked wading through
dangerous, fetid water to rescue the sacred Torah scrolls. With
desperate hope, they set sodden prayer shawls and historic
photographs in the air to dry, but the help came too late for the
ruined artifacts.
The wind ripped a section of the roof from one of St. Alphonsus
Catholic Church’s5 towers and
carried it a few blocks away. It landed with its cross, which had
adorned the building’s apex, buried headfirst in the ground. The
gash in the roof exposed the church’s interior to Katrina’s
merciless rains.
And, I heard stories of further desecration – stories about thieves
who looted the sacred spaces, taking priceless artifacts, which they
sold for personal gain.
Photographing in New Orleans, driving by the damaged structures and
sacred buildings leaves a definite scar on the psyche. Years later,
it still is heartbreaking to hear the stories of too many
congregations now dispersed in Katrina’s diaspora and the remaining
few determined to rebuild. Most poignant is that people want their
sacred spaces restored, but some churches and synagogues have only
five or six members of their congregations remaining.
Photographs jog the memory of personal history, such as remembrances
of weddings and funerals. Losing photographs—the visual records of
personal history—is a uniquely painful violation. It is often what
grieves people the most after the initial shock of such devastation
subsides. They can fix or rebuild structures. Treasured photographs
are irreplaceable.
I believe in the determination of the human spirit to build
community and restore order.
Ultimately, the reason I photograph these places is that being
inside offers a quiet refuge from chaos and confusion. It is a
search for beauty, and I can make photographs in peace. That is
reason enough.
For some, a technical explanation is deemed both important and
interesting. I use a 4 x 5 wooden field camera on a tripod. I load
my holders with daylight film and have them processed at a
professional color lab. From that point everything is digitized. The
transparency is scanned, electronically cleaned, and eventually
printed with the use of archival inks and museum-quality paper.
The photographs are usually not manipulated in any fashion. The
often-strange color is the way I found it, with the light coming
from the color of stained-glass windows or the mixture of daylight
and unfiltered tungsten balance. Occasionally the photograph was
filtered to convert daylight to a 3400K rather than a 3200K
incandescent light source for a slightly cooler result.
Not always obvious in some of the photographs are the long
exposures, several seconds to, in some instances, several minutes in
duration. Astronomers making deep space photographs realize that
light collects through the lens and onto the film, making a dark sky
seem full of stars. Likewise, a dark interior, given enough time,
will result in the same effect.
I especially wish to thank Marchita Mauck for hours of consultation
and advice; Lee Davis, my preliminary editor; Gillian Sims,
technical expertise; at the University Press of Mississippi, Craig
Gill, assistant director and editor-in-chief, for his support of
this project, and John Langston, assistant editor and art director;
Otis B. Wheeler (1921-2008), whose books on churches have been
inspiring; Zack Godshall, a talented filmmaker; and Tom Abel, a
former monk and father of five, the latter two for assisting with
hard work, hours of riding, listening to my general complaints,
pontificating on photography theories, and helping make this project
happen.
A. J. Meek
1 “A Calling of Voices,” The Hungering Dark, by
Frederick Buechner, Harper and Row, 1969, p. 26.
2 “Documentary” Photography was possibly first attributed to
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) in an article on Documentary Photography
published in A Pageant of Photography, San Francisco, p. 28, 1940.
Reprinted in Photographers on Photography: A Critical Anthology,
edited by Nathan Lyons, Prentice Hall, Inc., in collaboration with
the George Eastman House, New York, New York, 1966, p. 67. In some
regards, all photography no matter how abstract is rooted in the
documentary style on one level or another.
3 First published in The Amateur Photographer & Photography, Vol.
56, No. 1819,
p. 225. Reprinted in Photographers on Photography: A Critical
Anthology, edited by Nathan Lyons, Prentice Hall, Inc., in
collaboration with the George Eastman House, New York, New York,
1966, p. 110.
4 Ibid.
5 Now a struggling Community Center.
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