The Church Fan Book

The church fan is a ubiquitous, if little noticed, part of the Southern religious experience. Cut out of heavy paper in various shapes and stapled onto a wooden handle, it features a religious image on the front, and usually a small advertisement on the back for the company which has paid the expenses of producing the fans for the church. In the days before air conditioning, these fans were much appreciated by the congregation as they sat through a worship service several hours long.

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This body of work expresses something of my fascination with Southern Christianity: its fervency, its adherence to the past, and the contradictions which often appear between belief and action. It is presented in the form of a folding book with pages in the shape of a fan I found in an old abandoned country church. The outer covers are mounted on wooden handles, so it can actually be used as a fan. The images, which are from a variety of formats and origins, including pinhole, medium format, large format, and found images, were layered in Photoshop, with added text in most cases (except the Elvis page). I then printed negatives on Epson transparency film on an Epson Stylus Color 800, then made cyanotype prints from the negatives using the Ware process. Click on any of the small images to see a large version.

Send comments, questions and remarks to: jkapoor@jankapoor.net