Untitled (from the Perth Amboy series)

On the first two Sundays of last October, Harrison staked out an unassuming frame house in Perth Amboy, New Jersey that had recently become the focus of worldwide attention. Thousands of Christians were flocking to see what they believed was the visage of the Virgin Mary on a second floor window; visitors were occasionally allowed into the house to touch the pane. On the first Sunday, the window was open, and Harrison photographed the faithful as they held up Bibles, snapshots of the departed, and other mementos-praying, weeping, or deep in contemplation. The next week, the window was closed and the artist made pictures of the accumulation of fingerprints on the glass-traces of faith left by the believers. Just as Gauguin painted his Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) as a testament of belief to his medium's spiritual and communicative potential in the encroaching era of mechanical reproduction, Harrison's Perth Amboy is, in part, an allegory of photography-with the vague face of the Virgin materializing as if on a glass plate negative-as it faces its digital successor.