Hasta La Ideas

Photographer Hunter Barnes’ intimate images of an obscure American religion

In an era of digitally-manipulated images, Oregon-based photographer Hunter Barnes is one of a strong contingent who continue to create powerful pictures through a documentary approach. Intent on revealing unseen lifestyles, Barnes immerses himself within a community—past subjects have included ranchers, bikers and Native Americans—building trust with its members to intimately depict the reality of misunderstood subcultures.

For his latest project, “A Testimony of Serpent Handling,” Barnes traveled to the hills of West Virginia to document the last of a small community of Serpent Handlers. Abiding by the word of God, this dwindling religion (less than 15 members remaining) is largely unknown and fading fast in America. There, Barnes shot traditional black-and-white photography, documenting their miracle healing, poison drinking and serpent handling, in a series which he will exhibit at Milk Gallery NYC and with an extensive book.

With the process of completing the book underway, Barnes needs to further generate funds by 28 April 2011 to meet production and publication deadlines. To pledge support and help bring this project to publication, jump over to Kickstarter, where he’s halfway to reaching his goal of raising $12,000.

Photographer Edmund Sumner has sent us his pictures of a temple by Mumbai studio Sameep Padora & Associates.

Called Shiv Temple, the project involved simplifying a traditional temple design by removing the usual decoration but maintaining symbolic elements.

A wood-clad frame wraps around one corner marking the entrance, while the interior is illuminated by a skylight.

The temple was constructed by the villagers using local stone from a quarry near the site.

See all our stories about Sumner’s photographs »

The information below is from Sameep Padora & Associates:

Designed in dialogue with the priest and the people from surrounding villages the temple design is a collaborative effort.

Built through ‘Shramdaan’ (self build) by the villagers, this temple was constructed on a shoestring budget, using a local stone as a primary building block because of its availability from a quarry within 200 meters from the temple site.

The stone’s natural patina seems to confer age, as if the temple had always existed… before inhabitation.

In realizing the temple design in close consultation with the temple priest & the villagers, we attempted to sieve out through discussion & sketches the decorative components from the symbolic. Adhering to the planning logic of traditional temple architecture, the form of the temple chosen evokes in memory, the traditional shikhara temple silhouette.

Only embellishments integral to the essence of temple architecture in memory actually appear in the finished temple.

The heavy foliage of trees along the site edge demarcate an outdoor room, which become the traditional ‘mandapa’ (pillared hall), a room with trees as walls and sky the roof.

The path to the temple winds in between white oak trees till two free-standing basalt stone walls embedded in the landscape create pause as well as direct a person onto the East-West axis on which the garbagriha / inner sanctum lies.

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Entry to the sanctum is through an exaggerated threshold space which in turn frames the outside landscape for the inside.

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Stepped seating on the southern edge of the site negotiates steep contours while transforming the purely religious space into a socio-cultural one used for festival & gatherings.

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Religious Iconography in the form of statues of the holy cow, Nandi and Lord Vishnu’s avatar as a turtle become installations in the landscape and hence find their positions in a natural setting of the metaphoric sky-roofed mandapa.

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The ashtadhaatu (8 metal composite) temple kalash (finial) is held in place by a frame which also anchors a skylight to allow light to penetrate the inner sanctum/garbagriha.

Architects: Sameep Padora & Associates Design Team: Sameep Padora, Minal Modak, Vinay Mathias
Documentation: Viresh Mhatre, Anushka Contractor, Maansi Hathiwala, Prajish Vinayak

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House with Balls photographed by Edmund Sumner	Tea House photographed by Edmund Sumner	Tokyo apartment photographed by Edmund Sumner

To help kids understand the story of Passover—one of the more popular holidays for Jews and non-Jews alike because of its humanitarian message of social justice and peace—Francine Hermaline and her husband Adam Levite created “My Haggadah: Made it Myself.” The 48-page book speaks in a language that both children and adults can relate to about the meaning behind Passover and its inaugural feast, the Seder.

Haggadah, the special prayer book for Passover and usually a historic text, often seems like a tedious read to children. The Levites, who run motion picture and print design studio Associates in Science, were having trouble finding a book that matched both their aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities, so for the past seven years Francine has been making a Haggadah for her family and friends in Lower Manhattan. With the help of her kids and other kids from the community, it has slowly turned into a full book for kids aged four to 10. This year the family made the book available for free as a downloadable PDF file, or you can purchase a print version online.

Francine explained to CH, “The goal for ‘My Haggadah: Made it Myself’ is for the kids to put themselves in the story and wrestle with the topics with their parents. Every year I step it up a bit more, and this year I wanted to make it more widely available.” Through her blog kids can download new pages to create and post their work for others to see. Francine plans to create theme days such as “Plague Day” or “Question 5: What’s On Your Mind.” With traditions that have evolved over the course of numerous years, she has only yet to “scratch the surface” on a Haggadah that the whole family can enjoy together.