Artist: Maury Gortemiller

Project: Do the Priest in Different Voices

Description: Maury Gortemiller’s years-long project, Do the Priest in Different Voices, was inspired by his early memories of a family Bible. Enthralled by its illustrations, Gortemiller recalls that they “evoked both comfort and trepidation” and “moved me to contemplate the unseen.” This contemplation led him to create photographs that are rich in texture and disarming in their subject.

This spring, the series was published as a book. In his foreword, Richard McCabe calls the surreal images comprising the series “hard to decipher—a mishmash of seemingly dissonant visual elements,” but notes they are in fact subtly connected by “common themes central to art in the South: memory, mythology, family and place.”

Earlier images from the series appeared in a previous Eyes on the South, which you can see here.  

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  A Flame Came Up Out of the Rock

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  Before Them the Land is Like the Garden of Eden, Behind Them the Desert Waste. Nothing Escapes Them.

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  But the Seed Falling on Good Soil Refers to Someone Who Hears the Word.

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  Consider How the Wildflowers Grow

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  Everywhere We Go, Say of Me This is My Brother.

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  In Vain You Have Multiplied Remedies

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  The Clouds are the Dust of His Feet

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  The Sun and Moon Will Be Darkened and the Stars No Longer Shine

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  They That Had Eaten Were About Five Thousand Men

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  This is the Spirit of the Antichrist

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  Today You Will Be with Me in Paradise

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  Unless I See in His Hands the Nails I Will Not Believe

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  Whomever Eats My Flesh and Drinks My Blood Remains in Me and I in Them

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  Your Young Men Shall See Visions

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Eyes on the South&\#xA0;is curated by&\#xA0;Jeff Rich. The weekly series features selections of current work from Southern artists, or artists whose photography concerns the South. To submit your work to the series, email Jeff.