Christ the Light illustrates the living spirit of God, represented by the sun’s light, illuminating its vessel, the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, California. The light becomes the acting agent for both the architecture and the photographic process, and the resulting images attempt to formulate the perceived relationship between the sacred architecture and the spirit of God, which passes through and animates this living metaphor within the cathedral’s interior. Together the architecture and the sun’s light convey the soul’s pilgrimage, beginning with the Alpha and the baptismal font and ending at the Omega and reunion with Christ.
Through investigating the perceived synthesis of form and formlessness, stagnancy and movement, permanence and impermanence, the series also pays tribute to mystical Christianity as it gestures toward the imperceptible and unknowable. Collectively, the images are a reminder that photography is ultimately a sacrificial process in its attempt to preserve, and that the light captured in these images is both the day’s light and the piercing light of the spirit reaching inward. Individually, they are like votives and each is a call to contemplation, where the veils of illusion are lifted to reveal a brighter clarity within a greater Mystery centered between two overlapping spheres. The windowed curtains draped across the vesica piscis are without figure and icon and fill the body of the cathedral with pure sunlight, which is the means by which all things are seen.
