Sr. Faustina Appears In LondoNewry…

The full title of the work is “Sr. Faustina Appears In LondoNewry, Miraculously Preventing The Illegal Photography Of Members Of The Security Forces…”

Sister Faustina was a Polish visionary nun, who in the 1920s or 1930s received an image she called ‘The Divine Mercy’. It’s an image of Christ, I believe, as an embodiment of love, with rays of red (blood?) and white (water?) coming from his heart. She had someone paint the image as she described.

“I came across it because my grandmother, who was the same age as the century, was confined to her bed for some time and, apart from doing the Daily Mail crossword, amused herself by picking people from the ‘phone book and sending them a ‘holy picture card’ of that image.

In this picture I love the way the Newry checkpoint fence blends into the South Bank lights. It unusually has a number of my black and white photos of the border checkpoints mixed with several police landrovers in Newry town centre. ( I generally didn’t use more than one black and white element and tried to keep joins very visible) I had the problem of showing the faces of RUC men, which could actually have lead to their deaths by identifying them, so I had the idea that she could appear there miraculously and magically prevent their identification, on the basis that RUC men are human beings and therefore magical creatures too.”

Sean Hillen