BAPTISM SERIES
For eighteen years I have been working on an ongoing project titled "Beauty in the South – Above and Below the Water’s Line." This project documents the last remaining outdoor baptisms in the American south, a region that still recognizes it's heritage but in a culture where it's traditions are slowly fading away due to social evolutionary challenges. In rural America, preserving the essence of the small towns and regions is a vital part of remembering our heritage.
I began my documentary work in my home state of Alabama, where I discovered the river that I lived on was feeding into four other rivers that flow into an area where churches from three counties, in which the church congregations were all baptizing in the rivers or in their outdoor baptismal pools. After recording the area’s baptisms over a ten- year period, I discovered that all the churches there had stopped performing outdoor baptisms and, for the most part, had moved these rituals indoors.
As I continued my research, I found that some continue to baptize in a few other southern states and areas: Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and in the Gullah region of South Carolina. My purpose then became a race against time; Mother Nature, and the churches themselves that chose to no longer baptize outdoors. By being in the right places at just the right time, I was able to capture the last baptisms. After I shot many of these photographs, the ancient outdoor ceremony for these areas, because of arson, droughts, wildlife (snakes and alligators), floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes, disappeared.
As a underwater photographer, I use underwater housings with wide-angle glass ports and Nikonos underwater cameras to accommodate the surrounding environment to capture the attendants of the last remaining outdoor baptisms in the rivers, creeks, lakes and stone baptismal pools. A century old ritual which keeps the purity of it's tradition by recording it's times and dates of it's history in it's original form of black and white.
Caroline Davis has received two NEA Fellowship Grants through the State of Alabama and her work is in museum collections as well as private, corporate, and university collections.
I began my documentary work in my home state of Alabama, where I discovered the river that I lived on was feeding into four other rivers that flow into an area where churches from three counties, in which the church congregations were all baptizing in the rivers or in their outdoor baptismal pools. After recording the area’s baptisms over a ten- year period, I discovered that all the churches there had stopped performing outdoor baptisms and, for the most part, had moved these rituals indoors.
As I continued my research, I found that some continue to baptize in a few other southern states and areas: Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and in the Gullah region of South Carolina. My purpose then became a race against time; Mother Nature, and the churches themselves that chose to no longer baptize outdoors. By being in the right places at just the right time, I was able to capture the last baptisms. After I shot many of these photographs, the ancient outdoor ceremony for these areas, because of arson, droughts, wildlife (snakes and alligators), floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes, disappeared.
As a underwater photographer, I use underwater housings with wide-angle glass ports and Nikonos underwater cameras to accommodate the surrounding environment to capture the attendants of the last remaining outdoor baptisms in the rivers, creeks, lakes and stone baptismal pools. A century old ritual which keeps the purity of it's tradition by recording it's times and dates of it's history in it's original form of black and white.
Caroline Davis has received two NEA Fellowship Grants through the State of Alabama and her work is in museum collections as well as private, corporate, and university collections.
