Transubstantiation

photo: Yuri Shibuya

This photo was shot at The Grootto Church of Notre Dame on 114th and Morningside Drive. The church itself was built in 1910 and was based on L’Eglise des Invalides which is where Napoleon the First was buried in Paris. Inside of this church, there is a sculptural replica of the grotto where Our Lady revealed herself to St. Bernadette in Lourdes. Similar instances of The Virgin Mary revealing herself to travelers or, in the case of The Virgin of Guadalupe, Mestizo Mexicans, exist all throughout Catholic lore. Thus you have a grotto built to replicate the setting of a western European Catholic legend, inside a church built in the Neo-Classical style that was so popular (for obvious reasons) in Napoleons Empire, which then serves as the model for a church on a sparsely populated bluff along Morningside Drive in Manhattan, which just so happens to have an awkward ledge with a grate in front of it that is a perfect spot for me to do artsy backside tail-slides and have my friend from Japan shoot shoot grainy pictures of them.

Some interesting issues I like to think of about this setting are, for example:

-the idea of Transubstantiation in the Eucharist that is given in the Church, where bread and wine actually become the blood and flesh of Christ, all of this taking place in front of a replica of the grotto in Lourdes where another miracle supposedly took place

-the fact that this takes place in a small church built for an even smaller French community of Catholics which is nonetheless modeled after a larger French church (Invalides) which served as the burial place for an even larger (albeit relatively small) French emperor (Napoleon I).

-The few times that I’ve been there have found the Church empty and sometimes even locked. There are beautiful old churches all over New York City that are crumbling, literally, because there isn’t a strong religious community to support them. Nowadays, people go to storefront evangelical churches, mostly conducted in Spanish. While I was shooting the photo, an older black woman with bleached-blonde hair was taking out the trash. She stopped, looking quizzically at what I was doing.
“Let me ask you something,” she said.
“Yeah?” I panted, ready to argue and eventually to be-grudgingly leave.
“Just what exactly do you expect to accomplish there?”
I tried to explain the trick to her as best I could, describing how I had to slide on the ledge above the grate and hopefully roll away. I also added that the granite that I was skating on was very strong and would be here long after both of us were gone, and that I wasn’t doing damage to it.
“I’m not worried about the granite, honey. I’m just worried about you getting hurt. The granite may be strong, but you aren’t.” She smiled and went back to work. We had tacitly agreed.

-The Neo-Classical style of architecture is a 19th Century style which appropriates the architecture of the High Renaissance, which in turn looked all the way back to the ruins of Greece and Rome. Greek and Roman architecture, up to say, 323 AD is decidedly pagan. So the different contexts of the architecture and what it was intended for: civic/ecclesiastic, public/private, modern/(neo)classical,…etc. are all at play here.

-speaking of miracles, it was a real miracle that I actually landed that backside tail-slide, because I’m 32. Now, look at that number above: 323. I’m 32 years old. Next year I’ll be 33. Jesus Christ lived to 33, and savior though he may have been, he couldn’t do backside tail-slides. However, he probably wouldn’t have minded me doing one on the church dedicated to his mother. He’s a lot more tolerant than people give him credit for these days…