tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post3991480189052302860..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Camilo José Vergara: When Everything Fails (Repurposing Salvation in America's Urban Ruins)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-53298103445403294252015-02-17T16:08:27.961-08:002015-02-17T16:08:27.961-08:00I should add that Vergara has published a half doz...I should add that Vergara has published a half dozen books of his American photos. In a postscript to a collection of his church photos (How the Other Half Worships, Rutgers UP, 2005), he wrote:<br /><br />"For four years I had been attending Sunday services, Bible school, choir rehearsals, revivals, and anniversaries in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods. I attended services in basements and on the second floor of former factories, places I was able to find only by the noise of rattles and the preaching and the energetic singing that came from inside. I drove nights through desolate streets looking for houses of worship with their lights on. I walked into happy celebrations and graduations. I felt close to strangers as they testified, and observed poor people as they were being fleeced out of their money.<br /><br />"I search for places where the homeless, the drug addicted, and those recently released from prison go for food, shelter, and clothing, and get those things plus religion. Newcomers are given a grim view of humanity. Hungry and sleepy visitors to the Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission in Los Angeles were told: 'It is in the heart of men to do evil,' and are asked to belt out such hymns as 'Send the Light,' and 'What a Friend We Have in Jesus.' A few sheets of toilet paper are handed out to those who need to use the bathroom. After the service people are asked to go, ladies first, gentlemen and with crutches second, and then according to rows to the dining room for breakfast.<br /><br />"I was often asked to explain my presence and said that I was writing a book on churches. Once asked to speak to the congregation during Sunday services at Saints of God House of Prayer in the Bronx I commented that in 2004, fewer churches were offering Thanksgiving dinner.<br /><br />"Bishop Craig Hall, the pastor, thinking I had come to service looking for a turkey, offered me money to buy one.<br /><br />"I met many people who assured me that God had spoken to them. I enjoyed listening to pastors who mixed American practicality with zeal to save souls.<br /><br />"Among passionate preachers I found many who in their sermons combined their religious views with witty stories about human follies.<br /><br />"My life will be duller if I stop visiting these churches. I will miss faith healing, speaking in tongues, and meeting people who believe that the spirit of God is in their sanctuaries and who treated me as a friend. I will be curious about new preaching styles and ecclesiastical fashions. I will miss the church buildings, their artifacts, and the food prepared in them. And I am certain that I will find myself humming 'there are souls to rescue, there are souls to spare,' or 'Have thy own way. Have thy own way Lord' when I least expect it.<br /><br />"How could I hear promises from an 'awesome God' with the power to give eternal life and to eliminate suffering and remain unaffected? In these houses of worship I found an oasis from a world obsessed with celebrity, youth, possessions, and status. If I had felt it in me, I would have repented, become a believer, and perhaps I would have walked with God."<br /><br />---<br /><br />By the by, I have come to assume no one looks at the video links I sometimes post, so no one will have wondered about how Fat Tuesday and The Wild Tchoupitoulas found their way into this post, and therefore no one will want to hear my motives. Every keystroke not taken is a gift to the weary bones, in any case. But should anyone care, that wonderful footage from Nola featuring grand musicians who would become much better known in years to come, was shot a long time ago, by another great documentarian, the film-maker Les Blank, who died a little over a year ago.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-21873762253272139332015-02-17T16:07:01.708-08:002015-02-17T16:07:01.708-08:00Muchas gracias a todos.
Camilo José Vergara's...Muchas gracias a todos.<br /><br />Camilo José Vergara's monumental forty year project of documenting the disappearing life in America's crumbling cities and neighbourhoods recalls work done a century or more ago by social reformers like Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. His austere straight-on, squared-up frontal compositions signal a historian, a documentarian, a sociologist at work. And in truth, many of these images will be all that remains of the places seen in them, as the scenes pass further and further out of living memory. Vergara makes no pretense to be an avantgardist or celebrity fashionista. If he has ever snapped a selfie, it is not in his archive.<br /><br />He returns over and over to haunt streets torn by decay in impoverished neighbourhoods; on his night missions, he has admitted, there is a sense of ambient menace in the ruins of these dying cities. Yet he returns, and returns again, to construct what is in effect a time-lapse image-record of American urban decay, as it grinds on -- and down. <br /><br />His photos of churches and churchgoers represent perhaps 5% of his archive. For me, they are the heart of his project, for they attempt to capture what is in fact no more than a ghost, a wisp of spirit, a flickering spark of hope lost in great a sea of deprivation, pain and need.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-35256290370567965612015-02-17T15:03:15.212-08:002015-02-17T15:03:15.212-08:00interesante técnica también aplicable al paso de l...interesante técnica también aplicable al paso de las horas...aunque creo que las iglesias deben ser las que menos evolucionan...(?)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49302829824939872722015-02-17T07:37:49.839-08:002015-02-17T07:37:49.839-08:00Thank God for photographers like Vergara.Thank God for photographers like Vergara.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-70710920277960994492015-02-17T04:59:03.773-08:002015-02-17T04:59:03.773-08:00Tom,
No less skeptical about religion, but much m...Tom, <br />No less skeptical about religion, but much more moved by the hand-lettered variations on churches in Camilo José Vergara's beautiful photographs. What would Jesus say about the Baltimore Honda dealership become a church? Thanks for sharing these.<br />-DavidBe the BQEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11621320435990191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-23033389251493878572015-02-17T04:30:36.882-08:002015-02-17T04:30:36.882-08:00"What do you do?" she asked him.
"I..."What do you do?" she asked him.<br />"I'm a preacher"<br />The woman looked at him. "What church?"<br />He said "the Church without Christ"<br />"Protestant?" she asked suspiciously.<br /><br />Strange, but you see a lot of similar Church signs in the East End (London). It's only the Africans (Nigerians?) who keep these places open...<br /><br />Tom, I remember showing a tableeghi (missionary) around once and I took him to a lovely Church (Saint Bartholomew's). I told him: "these Churches are better than our mosques"<br /><br />"How's that?" he replied.<br /><br />"Because there are no people in them!"<br /><br />Can't but help think that religion wouldn't be a half bad thing if it wasn't for the 'religious'<br />billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-34849709891950210372015-02-17T02:25:13.279-08:002015-02-17T02:25:13.279-08:00Varieties of Religious Experience: Wild Tchoupitou...<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=498LZARXzN0" rel="nofollow">Varieties of Religious Experience: Wild Tchoupitoulas</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com