Behind the Lens
CARL DE KEYZER Documentary photographer
Documentary photographer Carl De Keyzer on his God Inc. 1 & II book
Belgium-born documentary photographer Carl De Keyzer has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1994. In 1990, during the first Gulf War, he spent a year travelling across the US with his family in a campervan, documenting the state of religion in the country at that time. Shot in black and white, that became his GodInc project.
30 years later, he returned to the US to shoot in colour, to examine how religious groups have embraced modern life and the latest digital technologies in their search for new followers. Both projects have come together in his new book, GodIncI&II.
What motivated you to start shooting the God Inc project?
Religion was a very important element in my life. I was brought up a Catholic; my mother was very religious, and two or three times a week we had to go to mass – it was kind of an indoctrination. When I was 12 or 13 I couldn’t believe there was a God; 20 years later, I still checked if there was a God and I couldn’t find him anywhere, so that’s why I used religion as the subject.
I had an exhibition at the American Embassy in Brussels, and someone said to me, “There’s a book here in the embassy where all the religions in America are listed, and all the companies that don’t pay taxes because they are listed as a religion.”
There were 3,700 different churches listed in that book. Their AGM was listed, the telephone number, an address and then five lines on what they believed in. I read it and made a selection of 600 churches that I found interesting, surreal or weird enough to contact. This was pre-internet, pre-mobile phone, pre-GPS; so I wrote 600 letters to all these churches, and after a few weeks I got hundreds of bibles and video cassettes, catalogues, posters, flyers, whatever… my mail man thought I was starting a church!
So you drove across the US in a campervan in 1990?
Yes. Religion mostly only happens on Sundays, and while a year is very long for a project, I only had 52 days to make the pictures. I towed a car behind the RV because it wasn’t possible to go to all of these Ku Klux Klan meetings or whatever with my family. We started in Los Angeles and did around 60,000 miles in one year. While doing the project, I was fortunate to get the Eugene Smith Award, which made sure that I was able to cover the whole project. GodIncII was easily €50,000, and there was no Eugene Smith Award.
Did you find yourself approaching God Inc II in a different way?
I wanted to give GodIncI a 1960s atmosphere, when the first fireball preachers and big evangelists like Billy Graham started their careers; this was a really extreme time for religion. I looked carefully at the work of Robert Capa from the 1950s and the 1960s, so tried to get into that period style-wise. The pictures look like they were taken in the 1950s and 1960s – although it was 30 years later – so it was like going back in time to make it even more conservative, more scary and surreal.
GodIncII had to be completely different. I was lucky, because Donald Trump was president when I started it. The evangelists and more fundamental strains of religion all supported him – it was like one big camp, so easier to react to. I decided to photograph the work in colour to make it look more like election-style propaganda – bright colours with a contemporary feel.
During my research, I found out that the old religion from the 1950s and the 1960s had gone away. All the big evangelists had died or had become bankrupt. Most young people had become atheists in America, but the ones who remained religious really became very ardent supporters of their religion, so I tried to focus on that.
How did you approach taking photographs in the churches?
You always have to ask permission, at least from the pastor. Not everyone in the church knew I was there, and often that was the deal with the pastor. I don’t know how I did it, because I always use big, medium-format cameras, but in a way I can make myself ‘invisible’ while still being very present.
For GodIncI, I had two huge Metz C60 flashes; when the flash goes off, it’s like a lightning bolt. With digital, high-res Fujifilm cameras like the GFX 100 and the GFX 50S allow you to shoot up to ISO 6,000, so I didn’t need flash and could work more intuitively.
Are you pleased with the work?
I decided to make a new edit of God IncI, taking all the nationalistic pictures out and [keeping] only the religious ones – I think it’s more robust as a result. With Covid, there were problems finishing GodIncII, and it’s not perfect. But no photo book is perfect – that’s why you keep on working, because you never make the perfect book.
www.carldekeyzer.com