Divine Lite
Bryan Hiott
digital photograph
11" x 14"
1999

I have been fascinated by images of Jesus in roadside shrines that dotted the rural landscape of the Carolinas. The most frequent image to accompany the shrines was that of the Good Shepherd, a mild Jesus protecting his flock. When I began photographing, I was drawn to these shrines. In Asheville, North Carolina, I encountered a concrete Jesus — a statue of the Good Shepherd, no less — on a hill across from the Civic Center, overlooking an expressway and peering through a grid of power lines toward a sadly overdeveloped mountain. This concrete Jesus, with his back to me and his arms outstretched, seemed not to be blessing the land so much as making a gesture of infinite resignation toward our poor stewardship of it. At the instant I made the photograph, a Lite Beer truck, having just emerged from a deep shadow, came to a stop before a red light at the intersection of Flint Street and Hiawassee; and this made the irony complete: out of darkness, Lite.