If your reading this blog post then I need your help. I have been working on an ongoing documentary project on Knock, Co. Mayo. It will go on for years and years but above you will see a sample of the images so far. In a fit of madness I entered it into a photography competition. I wasn’t expecting to get very far but I have one of the highest votes from the general public so far. I have 1 week left before voting closes. I need your vote! Please! You can see the entry Here and also vote at the top of the page. If I win I will have an opportunity to show my work at an exhibition in Paris.
Knock is a Marian Shrine, the virgin Mary is said to have appeared on the gable wall of the church in the 1879. Today it is a place of pilgrimage for all sorts of people. Why did I choose Knock? Well I have a personal story, a memory. When I was about 10 years of age I was fascinated by the rituals, the magic around Roman Catholicism. I wanted to be a priest. The past as they say is a foreign country. As a child you believe what adults tell you. Winning a place on a school trip to Knock I was one of a few kids to represent their class. I was so excited. As well as the day off school I was looking forward to seeing something a miracle perhaps?? Anyway I remember the bus journey and not a lot else now but I remember was the holy water. Holy water is the cure-all panacea of the church. I must have been told to bring some home and went in search of a sacred spring, special plastic bottle in hand to get my share of the sacred salve. I was surprised, confused by the ordinary, everyday faucets that the water was dispensed from, they looked exactly the same as those in our bathroom at home. How could the sacred remedy come from such ordinary plumbing? Of course I was enlightened by someone who told me that these ordinary bathroom fixtures and this ordinary tap water was changed via transubstantiation by the priest’s blessing. Doubt came dropping slow.
Thank you for you vote and for reading my story.
Brian Cooney's photography blog. 
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