Presence Obscured

This series explores the shifting culture of Christianity in the American South and my own experience of faith.

It was during a difficult pregnancy followed by a miscarriage, that I first felt as if God was still there, somewhere, but off in another room. That disorienting sense of presence obscured often remains years later, even as I recall times when I felt drenched in possibility and light.

Still, I find peace when I enter an empty sanctuary, a space hushed and full of the echoes of conversations and prayers which have lingered through the years. I sit and listen to the creaks, touch the hymnals frayed from use, and experience a depth of solitude. Photography becomes a prayer.

I step outside and see reminders of God everywhere: on bumper stickers, yard signs, and telephone poles. In the wider landscape, out under the sky, I feel small and begin to think we are like little children wearing tinsel halos and catawampus wings.

A while later, I turn down a red dirt road and see the closed doors and curtained windows of an abandoned church. Will it be lovingly restored or forgotten and crumble to the ground?

I want it to be remembered as it is now, these weathered walls, this door, that humble steeple. There is something here, resilience, memory, a whisper coated in peeling paint.

“The Song of Songs” comes to my mind. It is a love poem, a story of adoration, of searching and wistfulness.

Through these photographs, I share what I perceive as an ethereal sense of presence alongside themes of longing and loss.

The project is personal, yet also an open-ended offering to the viewer to ponder varied experiences of faith, whatever that might mean for the individual, especially in the midst of trauma or crises such as the world is enduring now.

©Karen Bullock 2023

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