In July 2020, New York City photographer Larry Racioppo reflected on his Catholic roots. He couldn’t recall when he stopped being a “practicing Catholic,” he wrote in an essay for this magazine. “My worldview simply expanded and eventually my parents’ and grandparents’ faith was no longer mine.”
Or so he thought.
As he reviewed his work over five decades—including more than 20 years as a photographer for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development—he realized that many of his extended projects focused on some aspect of religion.
“Hidden or neglected,” he wrote, “my Catholic roots had influenced my choice of subjects.”
Here Down on Dark Earth, published this year by Fordham University Press, is a poignant collection of more than 300 of Racioppo’s photographs. He connects his own deeply personal losses (there are scenes of family wakes and burials) with the many ways his fellow New Yorkers mourn and remember their loved ones.
Racioppo is especially drawn to the unofficial, makeshift, impermanent tributes, including many memorial walls commemorating the lives of local residents from his native Brooklyn to the Bronx.
“To me, these walls were an urban form of religious art with their colorful, bold depictions of Catholic imagery: Jesus and Mary, angels, rosaries, and praying hands,” he writes. He’s also drawn to the many snapshots, burning candles, stuffed toys, and flowers that family, friends, and neighbors contribute to street-corner shrines.
“All the memorials I’ve photographed were intended to … keep our deceased relatives and friends ‘alive.’”
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