Introduction
These anniversary photographs from the archive of Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement, expresses a unique religious belief system through the vernacular of American wedding photography: the soft focus, the formal and elaborate dress, the flowers, the intimate yet chaste eye contact, the stylistic codes of wealth, independence and success.
Within this iconography of conservative American values, the photograph performs a radical act that would have been shocking to most of the public in the 1940s and the 1950s. Marriage between the races was socially taboo and in many states illegal. Though the photographer took great care to minimize difference between skin shades, the photograph is a celebration of difference within oneness; a "visualization" of the social ideal of racial harmony through the celibate marriage between Father Divine, a 65 year-old African American man, and Mother Divine, a 21 year-old white Canadian woman.
The religious belief that this photograph depicts, however, is not the interracial union of two human beings, but the marriage of a single human being to her "God."
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*This is a work-in-progress.