The Cathedral in Photographs

On view through winter at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where I work on visual arts, cultural, and civic programming, is a photography exhibition that I curated. As everyone who has visited the Cathedral knows, it's one of the most enormous spaces in New York City, and it's literally impossible to see all of it. There are delicately carved roses and smirking gargoyles topping sky-high columns, and twisting, Dr. Seuss-like staircases with intricately patterned tiling tucked behind closed gates. For more than a century, photographers have been seeking out these hidden details and making them visible to us. This exhibition brings together a selection of their works, drawn from the Cathedral's archives and ranging from Pictorialist to Postmodern. It is pictures of a space within a space that needs to be pictured to be more completely seen.