Maloula: Festival of the Cross

Byzantine signal beacons commemorated

Clifftop fire at dawn

Tyres are burned to ignite logs which glow when they are thrown over the cliff onto the town below

Burning tyres

A young man who has slept in a tyre awakes

Young man wakes

Before dusk crowds top the mountain; tow boys pose for photos

Boys pose

A neon cross is taken down to make way for fire

Neon cross

Men come down from the mountain after tending fires overnight

Morning procession

At dawn I looked towards the north west

View from the Catholic mountain

Portrait of grandparents

Grandparents

Two framed photographs of the same man, younger and older.

Two portraits of barber

Portrait of husband, wife, son and daughter, Ma'loula, Syria August 2008

Family Portrait

These are part of an ongoing project shot in Maloula, Syria, in August 2008 and September 2009. The work presents aspects of Christian culture in a predominantly Muslim country, with particular focus on a single family, and a religious festival commemorating a beacon lit to carry news across the Holy Land in the Byzantine era, of the supposed discovery of a fragment of the Cross.

The first exhibition from this body of work was in Solihull Gallery in the summer of 2010.