St. Marks on Capitol Hill
I’ve been wanting to photograph St Marks on Capitol Hill for quite awhile. St. Marks is Seattle’s working class cathedral, in some ways a rough-hewn reminder of the European cathedrals of old.
Concrete buttresses, stone interiors, with a beautiful, unfinished ceilin, made of massive timbers criss-crossing above. The windows are enormous portals to the heavens, simple in their expression.
Large light fixtures hang from the ceiling, understated, the tone completely simple. The entire back of the church is taken up with the enormous organ pipes, like something out of a steam punk novel.
The day I was in shooting the stone foundation of the church literally shook and trembled with the force of the tones being projected from the organ pipes.
The place feels like some eleventh-century, pre-gothic castle. It certainly makes one feel as though transported back in time.
Its expanses cause a photographer some challenges, an extra-wide angle lens may be what is needed.
There are so many features, so many nooks and crannies. It’s a place one can come and just sit in solitude and quiet (on the days they are not practicing on the organ that is.)
Sunday evenings there is a mass where chanters fill the space with beautiful wordless melodies. This is called Compline.
Many people from all over Seattle fill the church, as the choir spreads their message into the empty and dark void of the cathedral.
There is something that crosses many boundaries inside the luminous caverns of St Marks, its a place I’ve always felt welcomed and comfortable.
