2008 Portfolio Prize Runner Up: Joe Johnson
Cloth, Louisville, Kentucky, 2007
We often see sweeping views of megachurches on our television screens, every seat filled, the shouts of televangelists deafening us even from the safe distance of our living rooms. (In order for a church to qualify as “mega”, its weekend service must draw at least 2,000 attendees.) Joe Johnson’s Mega Churches series grants us entry into these cavernous arenas during the silent moments when they are absent of people. By deliberately accentuating the gaudy color palette of these spaces, Johnson compellingly examines a new iconography of fundamentalism—part theme park, part shopping mall. In presenting the behind-the-scenes “mechanics of faith,” as he refers to it, Johnson’s work reveals the spectacular nature of this modern hybrid of religion and entertainment.
Neon and fluorescents are often the main sources of light in these photographs — light that conjures up strip clubs and casinos, or office cubicles, rather than places of spiritual enlightenment. In these images of artifice, it is difficult to situate oneself. The endless shades of taupe in one image place us in a corporate seminar; the jutting, phallic tower in another, on a Hollywood movie set; a paint-smeared rag set atop a schmorgasboard of switches suggests that we are backstage at a rock concert. Johnson strategically disorients us, leaving us feeling that wherever we are, we are far away from God.
All photographs from the series Mega Churches. Courtesy the artist.
Joe Johnson holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, both in photography. He has participated in both solo and group shows throughout the United States, and has an upcoming exhibition of this work at Gallery Kayafas in Boston this spring. Johnson is currently assistant professor of photography at the University of Missouri.
