TA24-J F-Pages - Flipbook - Page 25
Photo Essay
The Things Not Seen
Are Eternal
Photography by Herman Ellis Dyal, FAIA
Text by Anastasia Calhoun, Assoc. AIA, NOMA
Photographs of a baptism from 1954 (left) and a morning worship service in 1957 depict Riverside
Church in San Antonio in its heyday.
LEFT IMAGE COPYRIGHT JOE BOYD; RIGHT IMAGE COPYRIGHT ZINTGRAFF
When we look,
not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen:
for the things which are seen are temporal;
but the things which are not seen
are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18
King James Version
What follows is a collection of images excerpted
from “The Things Not Seen Are Eternal,” a
photographic monograph by Herman Ellis Dyal,
FAIA, that documents a two-year period of the
Riverside Church in San Antonio, which had been
the center of his family’s life since the 1940s. In
2021, Dyal visited the church for the 昀椀rst time in
50 years. Believing the space to be out of use, he
stepped inside and was surprised to be greeted by
the pastor. The church that had once boasted one
of the largest and fastest growing congregations
in the city had dwindled to an attendance of only
a dozen or so mostly elderly, longtime members.
The congregation now gathers in one small area,
and many of the rooms and spaces are no longer
in use, without electricity and slowly deteriorating.
The book not only captures a slice of American
religious cultural life but is a beautifully crafted
object unto itself. Its simple burgundy cloth-bound
cover, screen printed with a burnt orange rectangle
onto its surface, calls to mind a Rothko painting or
Turrell Skyspace, queuing up the reader for the
similarly evocative — and hauntingly familiar —
imagery that lies inside. Dyal’s detailed and carefully composed vignettes bear witness to a bygone
era, the spaces themselves palimpsests of detritus
collected over the second half of the 20th century.
The thoughtful framing of each image underscores
the discontinuity between the orthogonality of the
church’s architecture and the haphazardly placed
relics that occupy it. The period color palettes and
naturally daylit spaces, expertly photographed and
presented on a matte-finished paper, imbue the
images with an ethereal, painterly quality. Devoid
of people, the images instead rely on the cultural
artifacts and spaces to convey what can be interpreted as a commentary on the increasing secularization of society. What results is an amalgamation
of nostalgia, melancholy, and beauty, begging readers to interpret for themselves what truly is eternal.
Anastasia Calhoun, Assoc. AIA, NOMA, is editor of
Texas Architect.
1/2 2024
Texas Architect 23
