HOUSES OF WORSHIP

Houses of Worship
in a Multicultural Landscape

I have been an Oakland resident since 2006, brought here by unaffordable studio rents in San Francisco and a desire for more demographic diversity. Although I consider myself part of the fastest-growing denomination in the world (‘spiritual but not religious’), I noticed right away the significant number of religious buildings coexisting peacefully next to one other. This cross-denominational proximity inspired me, as my early roots are in Italy where such religious freedom is still elusive. Over the many years living here, I also began to notice just how many of those places kept shutting down and iconic buildings would be replaced by apartment complexes, clearly a more profitable proposition in a market-driven economy. For years I would drive by an old church and think that someone ought to document it before it is gone. By the end of the Covid lockdowns I finally reached the conclusion that that ‘someone’ might have to be me. Little did I know just how deep the rabbit hole would be.

My first surprise was discovering that there are no records of such places: after endless unsuccessful public records queries at city and county and federal level, I surrendered to building my own database of places of worship in Oakland, CA. Although I did my best to be as accurate and comprehensive as I could, this is a very dynamic world where many groups move around, and many locations change hands. So do not be surprised by the many changes that will indeed have occurred by the time you read this.

Then came the great task of driving all over the city to find and photograph each location, often having to return multiple times to have optimal visual conditions. Two years of meticulous photographic curation have culminated in a visual compendium, comprising over 460 individual locations. Various locations never re-opened after the lockdowns, several more have closed their doors since I started, and one ‘for sale’ sign after an other appeared. Most remain locked all week, except for a few hours of service.

The buildings range from big to small, from rich to poor. Their styles reflect a time and place. While heir conditions indicate an imminent loss, our search for meaning lives on. Maybe the church of magic mushrooms is not so out of place after all.

I approached this project in as much of a secular and unbiased way as possible. For instance the use of black and white, full frontal angles, and absence of people and cars, where deliberate. ‘Houses of Worship’ serves as a catalyst, inviting broader conversations on the contemporary pertinence of faith. Does the ebbing of religious devotion engender an irreparable loss of communal solidarity and individual identity? As these spaces metamorphose or vanish altogether, the project provokes a dissection of the emergent dynamics of communal sustenance, interconnection, and existential meaning-making.

My hope is that this might be a record of what once was and a platform for discussion on what is to come.