I grew up Catholic. I went to Catholic school. I had to go to church 6 days a week for many years. I was even an altar boy. It sucked. And even though I was smothered by all this Catholicism, it never occurred to me to take it seriously. Maybe it was because my dad never went to church and the nuns at my school were evil, pent-up she-bitches…or at least the main one was. The scariest nun was the one in charge–the principal, so whatever she said was the way it was. She was incredibly nasty and had a wart on the end of her nose and was always making people cry…even adults. Her name was Sister Joseph.

My intention is not to get overly political, but when you are faced with a finite number of Polaroid exposures, you get to thinking about how you want to express yourself when the chips are down. Religious iconography has always been a part of my life. Even as a non-practicing Catholic, I find the visual trappings of Catholicism irresistible. I love the players (Mary, God, Moses, et al) and I appreciate the melodrama behind it. I just don’t think that the only way to improve your life is to pray to Jesus and give the church all of your money.

The Photos:
I had Sean Blue meet up with me on Sunday, March 30th and knew him to be a pretty good magician and came up with a fun idea for a few Polaroids. We met at a little park near University and Park Ave. in Baltimore. I got there early and walked up an embankment behind a church and to my amazement found a perfectly quiet scene with hundreds of plastic Easter eggs everywhere. It was surreal…even more so when I realized that Easter was the previous Sunday. I hoped that Sean would get there soon and that a mass wouldn’t end and the scene be ruined. Sean showed up a few minutes later and we rushed over to the egg zone and saw, to my horror, countless tiny little faces staring at us through a row of glass doors–waiting to be released for their Easter egg hunt. We quickly ran over to the most discreet part of the yard and took one photo. I was too rushed and didn’t want anyone to think we were perverting their eggs so the shot I’d hoped to get never happened. But we got one shot to document the moment.

We then went across the street and within a minute or two we could see and hear a swarm of kids running around gathering up the eggs…not even having to search for them because they were all out in the open.

For the planned photo, the idea was to have Sean appear as Jesus Christ performing magic tricks and this is what I got.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 2:33 am and is filed under religious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.