“You can tell that Garry Winogrand was my hero. I learned so much from him about how to tell a story or a joke within a frame”
– Lisa Barlow, Holy Land, USA
In 1980s, Lisa Barlow found Jerusalem in a turning off Connecticut’s Route 69. A huge cross on the roadside alerted her to the nearby Holy Land USA theme park. She heard the call and went to discover the place and people who lived close to the sign of God’s love around the town of Waterbury.
“It was made with cement, plaster, rebar, cyclone fencing, wire … really anything could be repurposed to create this pictorial narration of the life of Christ,” says Lisa of the attraction built in 1958.
Originally developed by local attorney John Baptist Greco, Holy Land USA features various attractions inspired by passages in the Bible.
“We see a giant white lump on a pedestal signifying Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt; there’s a homuncular freeform creature meant to be Lucifer snarling menacingly from behind the bars of an actual dog cage; and the Inn, one foot high, with its sad little No Vacancy sign.”
“It astonished me with its lovingly, but sometimes clumsily, crafted tableaus depicting biblical scenes that conjured up both Disneyland and Hollywood, a kitschy wonder. As I photographed the people who were coming to find meaning here, I began to see it with more reverence.”
– Lisa Barlow, Holy Land
“I loved theatre and cinema and sometimes in my pictures I felt like I was creating little one-act plays. Like many photographers, I returned to my archive during the pandemic. This is how I rediscovered Holy Land USA. Made while I was an undergraduate at Yale, this work was awarded the Norman Holmes Pearson Prize in American Studies and has certainly guided the nature of all the photographs I have made since.”
– Lisa Barlow, Holy Land, USA
“Before long, it was more than a fascination with Holy Land that kept luring me back to Waterbury. It was the people who captured my attention, my imagination and, eventually, my love. This is Kenny. You can see that he loves Stephanie on his T-shirt and Blanca who is carved on his arm, but there were other girls’ names written on the wall above his bed. Sometimes in my car, I would tune into Hot 93.7 FM and hear my own name: ‘For Lisa, on her way to New Haven, here is How ’Bout Us by Champaign'”
– Holy Land, USA
“In this Woolworth’s you could get your picture made, buy a beach towel depicting the Last Supper or stockpile Lemonheads and Good & Plenty”
– Lisa Barlow, Holy Land
“Christianity loomed large in the town. There were crosses everywhere, even when they were just electric poles. And children seemed to always be outside, playing invented games in their own little kingdoms”
“Kenny is jogging, or perhaps levitating, to the grocery store. Instead of paying rent, he bought food and cooked for the family he lived with”
– Lisa Barlow, Holy Land, Connecticut
“At the Catholic Youth Dances at St Cecilia’s, not everyone had a partner. I loved [Edward] Hopper’s paintings and saw some of his picturesque melancholy in this woman”
– Lisa Barlow, Holy Land, Connecticut, USA
“At first, I went to McDonald’s for the fries. I soon learned that it was always somebody’s birthday there, or the nuns were going to treat themselves to sundaes”
Lisa Barlow is a photographer based in Brooklyn, Colorado, and Mexico City. She has worked as a documentarian for Public Television, taught in New York City and contributed to the International Center of Photography. Holy Land was born when Barlow revisited her archive during the Covid Pandemic.
Buy: Holy Land USA by Lisa Barlow is available from Stanley/Barker Books
Would you like to support Flashbak?
Please consider making a donation to our site. We don't want to rely on ads to bring you the best of visual culture. You can also support us by signing up to our Mailing List. And you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For great art and culture delivered to your door, visit our shop.
