Colourful churches of kerala
There’s something little different about the churches in kerala, india, and photographer stefanie zoche captured it all on film.
To anyone used to the grey monotony of Christian church construction – a design brief largely unchanged for the better part of a thousand years – it could take a moment to realise that, yes, these are actually churches. Striking pastels, futuristic shapes, garish decorative facades – this is the kind of Christianity you might expect from Mid-century Las Vegas, but it's located, of all places, in Kerala, the southernmost province of India. Photographer Stefanie Zoche first encountered these chapels – which belong to a sect of Catholicism known as the Syro-malabar Church – while travelling the country with her artistic partner, Sabine Haubitz, in 2006. The German duo’s photographic practice had long been fascinated with the way architecture reflects the lives and identities of those who use it, and they were instantly drawn to these rebelliously unrestrained expressions of faith. Sadly, Sabine passed away in 2014, but Stefanie returned to Kerala and created this series, known simply as Churches.
"For me, the facades of buildings are like the faces of people," she says. "If you look at them carefully, you can find out a lot about what's lying behind – about the society and the intentions of those who made these buildings."
To Stefanie, these churches – mostly built during the 1960s – tell a fascinating story about identities being reformed in the aftermath of colonialism. Up until India's independence in 1947, church architecture in the region had stuck closely to the European model: gothic; staid; a tower reaching skyward and topped with a cross. But as Indian nationalism took flight, a shift occurred, and suddenly, Stefanie says, "We see buildings in the form of praying hands, or a human body with arms rising up to the sky, or even a whole church in the shape of a ship." India's rush towards architectural modernity was heavily influenced by the sculptural concrete experimentation of Le Corbusier, but according to Stefanie, this only partly explains the no-holds-barred creativity on display in the south. "The fundamental law of modern architecture is 'form follows function'," she says. "Yet here, that's been completely ignored. It's almost anti-modernist in its modernism." Instead, the buildings are a strange mish-mash of biblical iconography, 1950s graphic design, and a particular Keralan sensibility – testimony, as Stefanie puts it, "to the desire of a nation to shake off the yoke of colonialism and create a unique architectural language of its own".
To honour the richness of identity running through these buildings, Stefanie tried to capture them as if she were shooting the people of Kerala themselves. "I wanted to isolate the churches from their surroundings, so I shot mostly in the same light and against a clear sky,” she says. “It gives them a certain serenity and severe regard." Her personal favourites are the upraised hands of the Assumption Church in Mupliyam, and the shining star adorning the front of St. Joseph's Church in Thuravoor.
However, what captivates Stefanie most about the buildings – and India in general – is the inescapable sense that antiquity and modernity are engaged in a pitched battle before our very eyes. "Indian cities are all full of these incredible juxtapositions between old and new, and traditional, modernist and postmodernist styles," Stefanie says. "I’ve spent nearly two years in India on various journeys, and I am still as intrigued by the rich culture and striking contrasts you see in every aspect of daily life as I was when I first arrived."