Prophetic Creation: Photography, Theology, and Sculpture
by B. Cayce Ramey
The Rev. B. Cayce Ramey is a photographer, priest, and rector of All Saints Episcopal Church Sharon Chapel in Alexandria, Virginia. He holds a B.S. from MIT in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and an M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary. His previous work includes documenting life as a U.S. Marine in Iraq, portraits of his children and family life, and photographic reflections on Eucharistic Sanctification. His current focus is on integrating faith, photography, and racial justice.
The Rev. B. Cayce Ramey is a photographer, priest, and rector of All Saints Episcopal Church Sharon Chapel in Alexandria, Virginia. He holds a B.S. from MIT in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and an M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary. His previous work includes documenting life as a U.S. Marine in Iraq, portraits of his children and family life, and photographic reflections on Eucharistic Sanctification. His current focus is on integrating faith, photography, and racial justice.
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The invitation seemed simple enough, “Would you document my work?” An artist and dear friend, Margaret Adams Parker, had been commissioned to create a sculpture of the Visitation for the grounds of my alma mater, Virginia Theological Seminary, and she wished to have her process photographed. The project offered me my first chance at a long-term photography assignment and a rare glimpse into the life of an artist. I accepted immediately and soon learned that photographing an artist as she creates a theological statement is anything but simple.
In the artist’s act of creation I began to see reflected rich biblical imagery. As her hands shaped Mary’s features, as her tools touched Mary’s lips, as she set her plumb-line in their midst, as she washed their feet, Parker crafted her own prophetic message about these two powerful figures and I had been invited to capture it all. Through the lens and in the backyard-shed-made-sculptor’s-studio, shapes and hands and conversation and wire and spirit flew freely, wildly. Documentation invited reflection, reflection offered insight, insight demanded expression, and expression inspired new directions for documentation. Photography and theology merged. |
I discovered my photographs held their own unique witness to the depth and breadth of the prophetic act and the prophetic spirit that reaches far beyond boundaries I too quickly set, too firmly hold. They offered new insights about the source and nature of prophetic witness and they challenged my individualistic, male-dominated stereotype of prophets themselves. Through this partnership of creative acts, through the vulnerability of artist and sculpture, I caught a glimpse of prophetic creation.
What follows is a portion of a fifty-photograph theological essay, Envisioning the Visitation, my own attempt at prophetic creation, which sought to give voice to the depths of hands and vision and relationships and forms which I encountered while “documenting” the creation, dedication, installation, and blessing of Parker’s sculpture, Mary the Prophet—He has filled the hungry with good things.
What follows is a portion of a fifty-photograph theological essay, Envisioning the Visitation, my own attempt at prophetic creation, which sought to give voice to the depths of hands and vision and relationships and forms which I encountered while “documenting” the creation, dedication, installation, and blessing of Parker’s sculpture, Mary the Prophet—He has filled the hungry with good things.
Then the Lord answered me and said, “Write the vision.”
—Habakkuk 2:2a
When our reality is turned upside-down by truth, when our expectations are shattered by insight, when our assumptions are challenged by a vision so bold and so new that it cannot be denied, we have encountered the Holy and the distinction between “prophet” and “artist” blurs. The eyes of the artist have seen beyond the pencil sketch and wire skeleton to the world as it can be and, perhaps, to the world that God intends. Artistic vision becomes prophetic witness wrought in penetrating gazes, in quiet knowing tears, in loving looks, and in attentive observations. Artist, subject, and viewer connect, caught in affecting sight, caught in the vision.
Wisdom reacheth from one end
to another mightily: and sweetly
doth she order all things.
—Wisdom of Solomon 8:1 (KJV)
Wisdom is given form in a touch, in the turn of a head, and in the clench of a fist. Yet these forms are not set. Final form is never set. It changes in time and space. Forms shift with the morning light. They sag under their own weight. They twist and turn, confounding their creator and speaking fresh insight. We encounter and must respond only to the form which lives before us and not the form we wished-for, hoped-for, prayed-for. We encounter and must respond to their form and our own. Prophetic truth cast in wire, plaster, wax, bronze, and flesh.
And Mary remained with her for about three months.
—Luke 1:56a
Prophetic truth is grounded in relationship. Yet, we are surrounded instead by the image of a solitary, separate, lone “voice of one crying out in the wilderness” (Mark 1:3). The company of prophets; the widow at Zarephath feeding Elijah; Samuel and Eli; Miriam, Aaron, and Moses; Jeremiah son of Hilkiah; the villages and towns, the mothers and grandmothers and sisters and fathers and brothers, the friends who surrounded the prophets and whose lives and loss fueled the burning heart, all too quickly disappear. We forget that behind even John the Baptist’s cry were first two women in loving, supportive relationship.
Relationship remains. Two modern prophetic voices supporting each other, giving birth, giving life while we observe in awe. Artists and theologians each uniquely embody the support and love alive in the Visitation. Relationship nurtures the prophetic vision, the prophetic voice. Little wonder is it, then, that Mary “went with haste” (Luke 1:39) into her cousin’s arms and that the Magnificat shares an audience with God, with Elizabeth, with the dearest of friends, and with us.
The eye cannot say to the hand,
“I have no need of you.”
—I Corinthians 12:21
This artist visualizes her creations outside her head. She uses her hands in concert with her mind’s eye, writing-sculpting the vision given to and shaped by her. Her hands enable and clarify her vision—hands that construct and destroy, hands that ache with pain, hands that caress and contort, measure and judge. Her hands do not serve some master inner-eye but work as co-creators.
Every prophetic truth, every prophetic word or image takes shape in a time and place. “Write the vision, make it plain on tablets” (Habakkuk 2:2). The vision is God’s, the handwriting our own. And so epiphany and insight come at the hand of the knife and the pick, the arc-welder, and the tin-snips. Vision grows and deepens as the artist’s hands smooth layers of plaster or scrape grooves of melted wax or bend thick wire to form. The hands that pour the waters of baptism, the hands that touch the face of the other, the hands that bind and loose, these hands realize God’s prophetic vision of the world before we see it ourselves.
