This is a street vendor in Rome. In Toronto the currency of the street vendor is hotdogs, in Rome it is religious items. I sought out Virgin Mary pendants as symbolic of purity in a patriarchal fortress. Here are mixed the bizarre elements of factory made commodities and spirituality in the same setting. There is an immense irony of owning a so-called spiritual object, particulary when it says MADE IN TAIWAN on the back, even more so when collected from under the row of snow-globes and miniature coliseums. But there is also a kind of beauty in the notion that all it takes is an image to summon the entirety of one’s faith. It is in the reflection and articulation of my attraction to the pendants that I am able to formulate her assimilation into my secular image collection: her portrait maintains it’s place as a kind of historical earth goddess, she is the mother of fertility that you read about in history books, post apocalypse. Photo by Jesse Albert
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