| The nuns in the Perpetual Adoration series have been praying on a rotating schedule, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, since 1878. I documented the nuns over 24 hours, photographing each shift change. There are 30 images in total. Each photograph in the series captures one moment in this unbroken chain of devotion, mirroring the nun’s individual action of prayer as she contributes to the greater whole. In no way could one of these women do this alone but together they form a tie that binds them to each other, to their past, and to the site. In addition to considerations of time and place, an important part of my work involves resolving my expectations of a site and situation to the reality I find. | 
|
Summer McCorkle is a Brooklyn-based artist.
Summer McCorkle, Perpetual Adoration no. 21 1:05am, 2006. C-print. Courtesy of the artist.The nuns in the Perpetual Adoration series have been praying on a rotating schedule, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, since 1878. I documented the nuns over 24 hours, photographing each shift change. There are 30 images in total.
Each photograph in the series captures one moment in this unbroken chain of devotion, mirroring the nun’s individual action of prayer as she contributes to the greater whole. In no way could one of these women do this alone but together they form a tie that binds them to each other, to their past, and to the site.
In addition to considerations of time and place, an important part of my work involves resolving my expectations of a site and situation to the reality I find. I start creating mental images of what it will be like; before I even arrive, I have a photograph in my head. With Perpetual Adoration, I envisioned photographs that would embody the theatricality of the Catholic Church—nuns dressed in stark black-and-white habits, kneeling within a sumptuous gilded cathedral. What I found instead was a distinctly Americanized interpretation of what a nun might be. A Midwestern sensibility toward practicality allowed the sisters to reject the traditional habit in favor of a more casual fashion. This freedom is best reflected in the images in which some arrive for their late night shifts in dressing gowns. These women do not need the uniform to remind themselves about who they are and what they are doing. In typical Midwestern manner, they are quietly proud of their work and mission.
My work is also as much about the physicality of my experience as it is about the end product of a photograph. In documenting Perpetual Adoration, I wanted to encounter a small segment of their efforts in action, and get a glimpse of what it means to devote oneself to this life. I stayed with them for 24 hours to put myself through a physical strain that parallels the act of perpetually adoring, and ritualized my shooting in order to have a connection to their specific approach.
All of these aspects also manifest themselves in the series Unsettled Sites, in which I investigate places rumored to be haunted or to have supernatural activity. I document these sites to test if the belief that a murder or accident that took place at a site imposes itself on and resonates within the landscape. Reconciling my imagined version of a site and what I actually find becomes the experience. My expectations of uneasiness at the site may be fulfilled and appear in the resulting photograph, but it is just as likely that the image falls flat, conveying my disappointment at having felt nothing. Here, documenting the honest experience in the landscape is more important to me than convincing people that it is worthy of being presented because it is beautiful or mysterious.
I love the notion of this antiquated act transpiring hidden amongst all the trappings that make up the modern American city.
