Reimag(in)ing Mary

   I come from a long line of Idolaters. In my strict Italian-Catholic upbringing, the veneration of holy images and statues was a common activity, particularly in my Grandmother Elvira’s house, where little shrines were set up in nearly every room. To my child’s mind, these “likenesses” of the holy were to be worshipped as things in and of themselves, rather than as symbols of the ineffable. Although a bevy of saints were represented, the most exalted was Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus who, through sheer number of appearances alone, was accorded a kind of Superstar status, her ever-veiled, fair-skinned, tender-eyed placidity easily trumping Jesus in the celestial hierarchy of our household. This Mariolatry reached its apex when a 4-foot tall cement statue of  Mary– only slightly shorter than my Grandmother -- took up residence in the backyard sheltered inside an old cast iron bathtub to become the focal point of our tiny urban grotto, an enduring presence of compassionate, gentle loveliness and pristine, forgiving motherly perfection for decades to come.

   While the figure remained in our backyard, I fled. Eschewing everything Catholic (and all that that implied) at the age of 13, I chased God and my own identity through teen ennui, punk rock anger, acid trips, family dysfunction and dissolution and all manner of existential crises for nearly  two decades until, as a graduate student, I stumbled (literally) upon Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon in the University library, which magically flew off a high shelf and landed at my feet. The book described an emergent earth-based pagan spirituality, at the center of which was a Goddess envisioned as divine Creatrix and primary generative force of the Universe. This feminine face of God, both fully human and fully supernatural, known by myriad names in many cultures through the ages, unspoiled by systems of dominance and patriarchy which sought to deny, debase and diminish her, who could even be imagined as the Earth itself, was alive and well, and I felt my being gathered into her fiercely protective arms and led into a visceral re-imagining of my self and my sex as reflections of the sacred.

   Over the years, I have come to understand my relationship with Mary as a gateway, a birth canal through which I have emerged into my authentic self. Despite my youthful turn against religion and the capriciousness of my journey, the one spiritual constant in my life has been Mary. Intellectually reframing her as the Goddess gave rise to a profound understanding of the mystery and duality that she represents, and provided a fresh perspective from which to fall in love with her anew. 

    ReImag(in)ing Mary is an intimate series of  photographic portraits of this most blessed of women, which grew out of an attempt to visually catalogue the vast collection of tawdry statues of Mary I have rescued over the years from thrift shops, flea markets and yard sales and other "Recovering Catholic" friends. Although many of the statues feature the same pedestrian blue-veiled dolefulness of my childhood Mary, I discovered a range of emotions and attitudes living inside each of these icons that went far beyond simplistic imaginings of her as Jesus’ mother.  As I had begun to see all women as Goddess, I began to see Mary as Woman, in all her complexities: at once mother and child, lover and friend, virgin and whore, meek housewife and revolutionary bitch. For Mary, in whose name and memory the most exquisite cathedrals in the world swing wide their doors to welcome all, is the woman who once was, is, and ever shall be the divine female face of humanity.