WE BECAME EVERYTHING

“We Became Everything” is an attempt to photograph what a spiritual experience feels like.

We Became Everything is concerned with photographing what a spiritual experience feels like as well as the young people who search for them.

Spending time with young people in religious communities and on spiritual retreats, I found that everyone I photographed shared permutations of one core conviction. This was a belief in the existence of two worlds; the familiar 'real' world as well as an elusive spiritual dimension that lies beyond the boundaries of normal perception.

The idea of photographing a link between these worlds, a nexus where the veil between them is thinnest, became a subject of fascination. These peak states of consciousness when one becomes aware of one world bleeding into the other are what we have come to know as religious experiences. These phenomena are defined by fleeting revelations, subtle rifts in reality, and a feeling of connection to the divine. In these instances, the banal gives way to the sublime. They are, in effect, metaphysical decisive moments.

I read in a psychological study once that a loss in the perception of time is one of the most common symptoms of religious experiences. Photography–the medium that pulls, stretches, and freezes time–is thus the perfect tool to capture these glimpses of the divine. The acts of making these pictures, sequencing them, and believing in their power are all acts of faith. The practice of photography therefore becomes a spiritual practice.