While in Atlanta to research Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthplace for Monuments, I photographed two little girls playing in a fountain in Olympic Park, capturing a moment that seemed to sum up Dr. King’s dream.
In the 2008 film, Birdsong, Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra portrays the three kings’ trek toward the Holy Family. The black and white film unfolds like a dream, capturing the internal journey of the kings as they stumble through a bleak landscape, accompanied only by the song of birds. Other than their crowns and robes, they lack regal trappings. [...]
Medieval pilgrims often slept in churches, finding respite there during their arduous journeys. But locals, too, had a wonderful familiarity with their churches, treating them as homes away from home. They bathed and did laundry with water drawn from holy wells and ate the food that merchants sold in the aisles. The smoke billowing from [...]
In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, Michael Diaz constructed an impromptu memorial in Manhattan for his missing brother Matthew. It consisted of a Payless shoebox holding a pair of worn black shoes, neatly tied. The top of the box, propped up, served as a kind of headstone. A verse from the Gospel of Mark [...]
As I left the theater, having just seen The Tree of Life, a woman waiting in line to see it asked, “How was it?” Awesome! I said, just as another patron declared, Awful! And that pretty much sums up how Terrence Malick’s provocative new movie has been received.
Are some books Kindle-proof, as this article suggests? Then let me wave my literary freak flag high: My books are illustrated with hundreds of color photographs (and illustrations, maps, floor plans, handwriting samples, etc.), incorporate fragmented page designs, and can be read front to back (or vice versa, and every way in between). The designers [...]
On the last Sunday of every month, Father John Jamnicky gets on a scale. Within moments his weight loss is posted on a big chart in the fellowship room of his church. “At 65, I have probably lost and gained more weight than the whole parish combined!” says Jamnicky, laughing. So far, he’s lost 36 [...]
A while ago, just as summer was ending, I went to an art opening at Yale University. I met a student, a young girl about 18 years old, who possessed the kind of guileless beauty that needs no embellishment. As we talked in the heat of the crowded galleries, she took off her jacket, revealing [...]
Today, perhaps, judged by the media’s polished criteria, the historical Mary, a peasant girl from dusty Palestine, might not have looked good. But she was good. Over the past 2,000 years, the Virgin Mary’s face has been imagined anew by every generation. We depict her beauty according to current standards of attractiveness, re-inventing her to [...]
The reading public rarely suspects the blood, sweat, and tears that go into designing a book cover. Creating a cover that will entice bookstore browsers to pick up the book and visually convey its essence (in a glance) is ultimately more of an art than a science. The fine online journal Ancora Imparo ran the [...]
