Impact

10 BEAUTIFUL ALTARS FOR GIVING THANKS NOW

by Cyril Porchet. Part of the Seduction Series.

Regardless of your religion, or lack thereof, universal to human spirit is the need to give thanks -- especially for gifts we cannot fully comprehend. Throughout history, and still today, we’ve built altars, shrines, and cathedrals as places of central spiritual focus, places to ask questions, ask for forgiveness, and give thanks.

Today, we share works from two photographers, Cyril Porchet, who photographs Baroque church altars, and Lisa Ross who memorializes antithetical shrines in rural China.

SEDUCTION -- CYRIL PORCHET

Swiss photographer Cyril Porchet became fascinated with the beauty of Baroque church altars. His award-winning Seduction series features a selection from Germany, Spain, and Austria.

These altars are all extremely ornate, to put it very mildly. It is as if intricacy and opulence offer the keys to the Pearly Gates.

Their ornamentation is complicated, composed of decorative, figurative, and symbolic elements.

These altars are designed to exalt and overwhelm, to make humans seem small and their gratitude seem enormous.

You can’t possibly see all the detail when you are there, looking at these altars in real life. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could conceive of and then execute it all. Even an intense study of Porchet’s photos won’t let you see everything.

“This profligacy of splendor stuns the senses and, at first glance, produces an effect tending towards abstraction,” says Porchet. “The observer loses his references and only after is he able to begin differentiating the concrete elements composing the whole. The optical flatness produced by the camera looks like and references the trompe l’oeil technique often used in this type of architecture.”

Some historians theorize that the Baroque style developed at a time when the Catholic Church was reacting against science and new forms of religion. By going over the top in opulence, the papacy outdid the monarchs and tugged at the hearts and minds of those who might have considered straying.

“Give thanks to all things beautiful,” is the message these altars convey. Of course, they figure that when you are there, you’ll be “talking” to the same god as they intended for you.

In photographing these altars, Porchet over-exposed the main elements to highlight their structural and contextual data. It adds a level of “abstraction” that helps the viewer take all the beauty in. And whether or not you are a believer, you can’t help but feel grateful.

LIVING SHRINES -- LISA ROSS

American photographer Lisa Ross found beauty in makeshift shrines sprouting from the middle of the Taklamakan Desert, of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

They stood, like ghostly lean-to’s, made out of sticks, cloths, animal skeletons, and other objects. Their simplicity obviously came from a deep and soulful place. These were the Uyghur people’s holy sites.

Lisa Ross’ photographs depict shrines that each mark a personal prayer: a woman’s wish for a child, a desire for domestic harmony, healing, or an expression of thanks. There is an intimacy about them. You feel the people who made them, the people to whom they refer, and the people to tend these altars.

Ross explains. “I have tried to capture both the fragility and the strength of these works.”

The Chinese government has designated the Uyghur shrines as “cultural property” rather than as religious sites. They are tourist attractions in this oil and gas-rich region.

Ross is based in New York. Her work appears in numerous museum and private collections worldwide. She has an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Today she is Adjunct Professor at Parsons School of Design in New York.

Ross’ photographs are also available in the book Living Shrines of Uyghur China.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Thanks in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 11.30.2014. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!