'First Holy Communion' is a series of images taken from a photographic 35mm slide my father had taken at my first holy communion when I was seven years old in 1967. I went through school with most of the boys in the photograph. Unfortunately like most of us, I have never seen my classmates since my school days. 

I worked the old fragmented slide in photoshop and created thirty images from the original slide and a short video. My father has now passed away but he has left  me a gift of his poignent and moving photographs. I am restoring the old slides and now recreating stories from my past. 

What is the intended meaning?
When I was an art student I studied and researched the film and montage work of the Russian propagandist film producer and director Sergei Eisenstein. I was always fascinated by his body of work. The hidden signs and symbols he weaved throughout his work. The filmic emotional and even gender ambiguities he displays in the silent films 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925) and 'Ivan the Terrible' (1944) creates artifice and a tension within the moving image or the still, capturing the essence of human emotional pain, or is it joy? Bernini the Baroque sculptor also captures the same human emotional ambiguities in the marble sculpture 'The Ecstasy of St. Teresa'

Some of the images in 'holy communion:1967' display the same hidden codes and symbols that take you to the 'Third Level' of meaning (beyond words and language). The visual implies or subverts the meaning. The video, music and stills are really just what they are; a montage, a joyous and happy day. The viewers own core beliefs and societal codes subvert the true meaning of the video. 

        
Bernini, 'Ecstasy of St. Teresa' 1647- 52


As you can see in the above video still images some display ambiguous aspects of ecstasy, joy and pain, which sub consciously can create a tension or visual and emotional crisis when interpreted by the viewer. In the essay 1970. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, Roland Barhtes goes further and states that images have three levels -

• An informational level.  This is the level of communication.
• A symbolic level, the level of referential, historical, and  Eisensteinian symbolism, accessible not through a science of signs, but  through sciences of the symbol (for example, dramaturgy, psychoanalysis).
• A third level, which "transcends psychology, anecdote, function," which Barthes will call signifiance.

        
stills from the silent movie by Sergei Eisenstein 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925)

The Third Meaning (Obtuse meaning)  is beyond aritculation or  meaning and sits in a psychologigal emotional state or diguise. 'holy communion:1967 has elements of the 'third meaning' which as stated previously subverts the viewers own codes and symbols or core beliefs. However, again, put simply they are still just images from a single snapshot of a happy and joyous day.



Untitled 'holy communion: 1967' (video still) 
Click to watch video - http://www.youtube.com/v/LI_j1mBU83M&hl=en_US&fs=1&border=1"></param><param


     
'White  Meditation' ceramic                  'Surfing Days: 1974' oil 1.4 x .8