Stephen Sidlo Copyright 2008I took this image about 4 years ago and when looking through my neg files I came across it, scanned it in. Its a transparency image of a church and tombstone, but it’s not actually a church its a million pound inner city complex for yuppies and whatnot. Mercedes Benz line the car parks and a guard slowly trundles around the graveyard that surrounds the church. On the door there is a sign saying ‘This is an Automatic Door, Please Do Not Push or Pull.’ Trespassers will be Prosecuted.
Now I’m not religious, but I understand religion. I also understand the safe haven that comes within a church, the hopeful protection of god within its walls from whatever. To see a monument to god in a major cosmopolitan city, that is inaccessible to everyone. With also a nice young girl with phones and buttons behind the glass panelled door upon entrance just makes it all the more surreal.
But what about the tombstone? It has this strange number on the back, it cant be a tag…more like a phone number or removal number. God doesn’t even know this one because he has been bought out by large sums of cash. The tombstones have been there since it was converted and people had been living there for 9 months. So why do they remain?
Filed under: church, churches, inner-city, manchester, mercedes, religion
