Unto Dust – GREG MILLER

65,00 

Photography by Greg Miller
Design by Ramon Pez
2018

Size of the book: 20 x 25.5 cm

64 pages – Four color printing
Hardback

Published in English

First Edition 500 copies

Cover price: 55,00 Euro (VAT included)

 

 

28 in stock

Description

On a cool February day, 20 years ago, Greg Miller asked a New Yorker why they were wearing ashes on their forehead. Fascinated by the juxtaposition of the ancient ritual against the backdrop of contemporary New York City, Miller began documenting Ash Wednesday every year using his large format 8-by-10 inch view camera. Unto Dust showcases over 40 of Miller’s portraits of workers, business people, tourists and other New Yorkers on the first day of Lent made over the course of two decades.

“In 1997, I began most days by walking down the steps of my apartment building onto East 32nd Street with a wooden 8” by 10” camera over my shoulder. Following intuition and the light, I’d walk around different neighborhoods of the city and make pictures. On this particular February day, I was standing on bustling Third Avenue near Grand Central Station when something I saw in that sharply angled winter sunlight made me pause. People were going about their day – to work, to lunch, talking, laughing, smoking, and hailing taxis – all with ashen crosses on their foreheads. The visual juxtaposition was suddenly so compelling. A few more people walked by, and then I saw a man I would have stopped to photograph on any day; his receding white hair and bushy mustache were like my father’s. Yet the ashes on his forehead were evocative of something more ancient and mysterious. The photograph I made of him became the first in what would become a twenty-year-long exploration of Ash Wednesday through portraiture. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent in the Christian liturgical calendar. A priest administers ashes to a person’s forehead while uttering some version of the
memento mori, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” This ritual observance acts as a reminder of the believer’s own mortality and imperfect nature at the beginning of the introspective and repentant period of Lent. My own artistic ritual, returning to New York City year after year to photograph Ash Wednesday, has made this series personally sacred. Because the day arrives in late winter, it coincides with my own emerging from a kind of photographic hibernation, resuming the somewhat scary, yet rewarding practice of photographing strangers on the street. Ash Wednesday allows me to reflect on the past year. This echoes what many of the people in my pictures report feeling: their day begins in apprehension and trepidation, but as the hours pass it transforms into an experience of redemption
and forgiveness. As an observer, I’m cautious about assuming what the mark of the ashes means for the faith of those who receive it. I used to think that all my subjects must be devout in some kind of singular or definable way. Yet through the years, in talking with over 300 subjects, I’ve learned that the physical practice of the ritual is the unifying feature for people whose faith is a varied, complex, living phenomenon.”

Greg Miller

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