SHADES OF GRACE captures both a sense of community and a feeling of profound isolation I witnessed in the church from 1990-1998.
Shades of Grace
This project captures both a sense of community and a feeling of profound isolation I witnessed in the church from 1990-1998. I made this set of candid photographs on the edges of my freelance assignments for The Pilot, newspaper of the archdiocese of Boston.
Shades of Grace was exhibited at Scollay Square Gallery in Boston City Hall in 2000 and published in DoubleTake magazine, with this statement:
I am interested in moments of private expression in public spaces, in recording where we come together yet stay separate from one another. My photographs are not intended to illustrate the great social and political issues swirling around religion and spirituality. Rather, I hope these visual moments say something about the interplay of solitude and community that we all live with. To me, the work is about the ambiguities rather than the doctrines of faith.
At the time, I had a landline and used a fax machine at a local insurance agency. I delivered my silver gelatin prints to the magazine by hand. And the Catholic church was probably still the most powerful institution in Boston.