Purificators - The immaculate collection.

These images are scans of 'purificators' - the correct ecclesiastical 
term for those squares of white cotton or linen used to wipe the wine 
from the rim of the chalice in the celebration of the Eucharist. In 
the act of communion, the faithful believe that the wine becomes 
transubstantiated
 into the blood of Christ. The purificator, pristine and 
immaculate, becomes variously stained with red traces and smears as 
it is held against the rim of the vessel. An anthropologist might see 
in this ritual a complex exchange of symbolic polarities - the pure 
and the soiled, the primary and the contingent. The crisp white 
square records the encounter with the red stain in a way that is 
close to the biblical narrative of the Shroud of Veronica. Christ, 
sweating from the strain of carrying the cross through the streets of 
Jerusalem on his way to Calvary, is approached by a woman who steps 
forward from the crowd and offers Christ her veil. She wipes his 
blood and sweat onto the white cloth and, a moment later, Christ 
moves on to his inexorable fate. Veronica looks down at the cloth in 
her hands and unfurls the fabric: the stain miraculously paints a 
picture of the face of Christ. In fact, the name Veronica means 
exactly this: a true image. The legend of the Shroud of Veronica has 
a special resonance for the photographer because photography too 
claims to produce a true image, an authentic picture of the world, as 
the impassive camera registers the image before it. But my images 
of soiled purificators are not, in fact, photographs, there is no 
camera. Instead the fabric is placed face down, touching the glass 
bed of the scanner. Very slowly the scanner shifts across its 
horizontal axis in a way that seems closer to a hand moving across 
skin than the cold, remote inspection of the camera or the eye. The 
image the scanner slowly collates in this invisible, sustained 
caress is an accumulation of indexical traces different - and 
perhaps purer - than conventional photography.


Paul Kilsby 2006