Recently the “New Creation Student Arts” group at Duke Divinity School held a photo contest with the theme “Food and Faith,” and one of my entries won second place!
The theme for the contest came from the book “Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating” by Norman Wirzba.
The exhibit was created to help relay two major ideas from Wirzba’s book. First, we must acknowledge the fact that our culture often manufactures food in such a way that much of it is wasted, the environment is degraded, and inhumane processes abound. Second, we must also acknowledge that our faith is sustained by food, particularly the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and that we are called to be stewards of God’s creation.
My three entries were from my trip to Central America this summer. I featured the bottom two photographs previously in the post Cooking in Guatemala. The first entry is one that I hadn’t shared until the contest and it ended up winning second place.
The photo features Ángel, the pastor of La Iglesia Evangelica Metodista La Providencia. It was taken at his house late in July when he had the interns from Duke over for a last supper of sorts. We were all sharing homemade lasagna and Coca-Cola when a torrential rain storm moved in. Suddenly, the power went out. At this point in the trip this wasn’t too rare, so we all kept talking, eating, and enjoying Ángel’s huge smile in the candlelight. I pulled my camera out because I love to photograph in low-light settings. I took numerous frames, but when I took this one I knew it was special. Ángel doesn’t regularly smile for posed photos.
“Pastor Ángel” – Ahuachapán, El Salvador
“Macadamia” – Communiad Nueva Alianza, Coffee Finca
“Tortilleria: Los Comalitos” – Xela, Guatemala
