Cultivating the Photographic Eye – Pictures That Tell Stories is a column exploring the divine in so-called humanist photography from the street to sacred. Photography gives us the ability to see God’s craftsmanship in a clear and insightful way, and that’s what we aim to pursue here. We’ll combine images with the written word to focus primarily on stories and themes that give us a glimpse into the tapestry of God’s creation that would be too expansive for us to see in one setting otherwise.
The winter sky lies low and heavy against the soft hills and meadows surrounding St. Cyr in the Cotswolds. Above a distant vale, wispy clouds drift across the bleak grayness like question marks in search of a fugitive sentence.
Over the last decade, I’ve visited this stone church in the English countryside so many times, I’ve lost count. Part of my fondness for St. Cyr is convenience. The Norman church is near the hotel where I often lodge when here for work.
I stop in for one last visit before returning to London, and then home. The church’s heavy oak door groans on its iron hinges, and when it claps shut behind me, a guttering candle near the altar flickers in the draught.
In warmer weather, the surrounding fields and paddocks are lush and green. The bleating of grazing sheep often rolls across the gentle contours of the land. Further up in the valley region, fields of flax and rapeseed heave and swell in the summer winds like tidal flows in the sea.
Both the church and hotel are next to a canal that once acted as an artery of commerce and transportation in England’s Industrial Revolution. These days, however, the exchange of goods has been replaced by the fauna and flora of English romanticism. Wildflowers embroider the canal walkways where horses once pulled boats before the ascendency of steam engines.
The boatman’s call is a thing of the past, and the waterway has become the domain of waterfowl like moorhens, coots, and ducks. Swans, the most regal of the reed-loving birds, glide across the languid waters of the canal, sometimes hissing a warning at the careless foot-traveler.
Even for an unreconstructed city slicker like me who feels more at home in London, Buenos Aires, or Mexico City, this inviting wildness of God’s creation is just as it should be.
But now the summer is long gone and with November drawing to a close, the village’s high street merchants have already decorated their storefront windows with Christmas adornments.
Churches like St. Cyr are often accessible throughout the week as a haven for lonesome pensioners and the more spiritual-minded seeking a cleft of divine quietness.
For my part, I have come in for a moment of silence and prayer before the trek back to the hotel and the onset of moonless night. By this time of the blustery day, only the most steadfast of light seeps through the church’s heavy windows.
No one else is here; only I have a congregation of light and shadow to bear witness. From the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a dust-and-cobweb-covered crucifix hanging from the window and am jolted by the sight of this neglect bordering on profanity. But then, my conceit quickly evaporates as I remember just how often I’ve let my own faith grow cold, and the cross in my life gathers dust in disregard.
As the light shifts in the stone sanctuary, for a brief moment the crucifix hangs luminous against the encroaching shadows. Christ’s outstretched arms bridge the last rays of late-autumn sunlight and a darkness that feels almost cosmic, drawing me in.
I pull out a compact 35mm camera I carry with me when traveling and take one final picture before dusk makes a handheld snapshot impossible.
The camera’s mechanical shutter is so loud in the confines of the old stone church that I feel embarrassed at breaking the silence of this holy place. But when I slip the camera back into my tote bag and lean back on the creaking wooden pew, watching the last of the light on the cross, I no longer feel alone.
The featured image, “Frosted Grasses in Winter,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Tommy Darin Liskey was born in Missouri but spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Red Truck Review, Deep South, Driftwood Press, Biostories, Spelk, Heartwood among others. His narrative and documentary photography has been published in The Museum of Americana, Change 7, The Blue Mountain Review, Cowboy Jamboree, Literary Life and Midwestern Gothic, among others. He lives in Texas with his family.
“I take a more documentary approach to photography, using the camera to explore faith in images, and hopefully, the human story, through unplanned street portraits of people I meet in my both my travels, and everyday life. As both a writer and photographer, I believe my calling is to be present. I pray that God choreographs the rest.”
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