Pieta Chapel

"Window Outline, Pieta Chapel" is a photograph that almost wasn't. I made this image after first thinking that it was too "out there" for the project. It was made soon after I started to shoot for the project and I was still trying to discover how to convey the presence of these old sacred places.

Capturing that presence is an ongoing struggle. My mentor, George DeWolfe, summed the problem up succinctly, "How do you photograph the invisible?" And while he's helped me come up with a starting place, it's a question worthy of more than one answer. 

Pieta Chapel is behind the St. Donatus Catholic Church, between Dubuque and Bellevue, Iowa. The chapel sits on the top of a ridge behind the church. The path up to the chapel threads past an Outdoor Way of the Cross and, fittingly enough, through a sheep pasture.