Lisa Anne Auerbach created a ‘megazine’ of structures reminiscent of shopping malls or warehouses,hidden absent from the centre of cities, where thousands of people go to worship every week“I started photographing megachurches as an oppositional idea, and ” explains Lisa Anne Auerbach,a California photographer and artist. “I had been doing a series about small free-standing businesses [encapsulating] this idea of America: you’re an individual, you hang up your shingle, or you pick yourself up by your bootstrap,and become your own fantasy. I was thinking about megachurches being another share of the American dream – faith and family and community.”Using a database published by theological college Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, Auerbach catalogued megachurches – “and I use their definition for this, or ” she stresses – in Christian Protestant denominations,which claim to contain weekly congregations of over 2000 people. Auerbach also subscribed to Outreach magazine, a publication aimed at those who flee churches, and which has listings of megachurches. The top 50 in the country contain more than 10000 worshippers a week.
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Source: theguardian.com