A Visual Walk with Christ

6.11.21

Some dream of retiring so they can fish more, play golf more, or enjoy any number of other leisure activities. I dream of visually interpreting the stories of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Biblical gospels. 

Ever since I began reading and studying the Bible in earnest more than 50 years ago, I have dreamed (at times ached) to use my gifts to share what I see and feel.  To this day when I read the Bible, images still flash through my head, as if crying out to be released.  

Now, after 50 years of dreaming, I am ready to use my photographic and storytelling skills, developed through five decades as a photojournalist, to create images from the life of Christ as recorded in the New Testament.  In other words, a visual commentary.  

Many historians and scholars have written commentaries on the life of Jesus Christ, and thousands of artists have used their skills to draw, paint, sculpt how they envisioned various gospel scenes. Notably, one medium that has not been widely utilized for such a commentary is the photograph. I plan to change this.

When Jesus stoops and writes in the dirt as a woman said to be caught in adultery is brought before him, I can see the humiliation and fear on the her face as if I was standing close and watching. When he and his disciples see a funeral procession – a weeping mother clothed in grief as her only son is carried away after his death – my heart aches and my eyes fill as I see her weeping, all hope drained from her ashen face. In my years as a photojournalist, I have witnessed this grief more times than I care to count.

In this project, I want to honor Jesus by working primarily with the disenfranchised – the poor, the lonely, the suffering that Jesus spent so much of his ministry loving.

I am asking for your support to make this dream a reality. 

Though I plan to release individual images as they are completed, compiling and publishing these interpretive scenes in book form is the ultimate goal.  I anticipate it will take two years before such a book is ready to be published. 

I hope to see you then!

Thank you,

David LaBelle