Encounters beyond photography
I am in the midst of the mental acrobatics which usually accompany my Easter. I am thinking about the cross whilst writing about the tomb, and the crowd’s shouting from Palm Sunday is still in my ear as I contemplate the quietness of the Upper Room. In short, I am always glad to hoover up inspiration.
Today, I found it via a Belgian museum , courtesy of an American Photographer. The Musea in Brugge is hosting an exhibition by Los Angeles photographer Andrew George entitled ‘right, before I die.’ This project is the fruit of two years’ hard work talking to patients in the palliative care department of a California Hospital. He not only took beautiful, dignified, photographs of the patients, but also documented their hopes, fears and recollections. Some of the most moving items in the book and the exhibition are handwritten testimonials of what the patients were feeling. Many of those now pictured have died, but their stories live on through the exhibition.
Maybe this all seems a little morbid for a man writing Easter sermons? Not at all. The glory of Easter is precisely that in it death and life, despair and hope are to be found cheek by jowl. Faith must inhabit the world in which the ordinary people pictured by George live and die – or it cannot serve us.
I shall return to my Easter preparation with renewed vigour now, and I suggest you visit the collection via the photo below if you would like to do the same.
CLICK to see more of Andrew George’s remarkable work