Brothers and Sisters: Glimpses of the Cloistered Life

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Among contemporary photographers, Frank Monaco has been granted an unusual degree of access to the lives of monks and nuns. His stewardship of this gift has produced images of uncommon beauty, collected in Brothers and Sisters: Glimpses of the Cloistered Life. Novelist Ron Hansen (Mariette in Ecstasy) notes in the foreword that "The happiness that men and women find in consecrated, cloistered life is what surprises outsiders most." Happiness does radiate from the black-and-white photographs depicting monks and nuns of various traditions (from Carthusians to Poor Clares) washing windows, reading, gardening, making music, and tending graves. Most of the images are accompanied by excerpts from the orders that structure cloistered lives, such as the following, from St. Teresa of Avila's Way of Perfection: "And if you are in the kitchen, our Lord moves among the pots and pans." Frank Monaco's photographs are composed with a joyful simplicity that is probably hard earned and certainly well suited to his subjects' lives. --Michael Joseph Gross


Book Description
Our experience of the rush of the contemporary world awakens in many of us a longing for a place to experience silence, quiet reflection, and days uninterrupted by a constant barrage of external stimulus. But to choose to live cut off from the world—as do monks and nuns—is something many of us find difficult to understand. During his fifty years as a photographer, Frank Monaco has been repeatedly drawn to spiritual and religious subjects and has often been welcomed as a guest within the walls of enclosed monasteries and convents. Over the course of many years, he recorded the activities in the monasteries of Western Europe. While reviewing his files of photographs taken in these quiet places, he was struck by the common features of the lives of the monks and nuns in their monasteries and convents. "Further searching," Monaco writes, "revealed many photographs showing the side-by-side engagement that exists between monk and nun in the cell, novitiate, worship, labor, meals, and recreation. They are engaged in the religious life like a family…like brothers and sisters." Frank Monaco’s images provide rare and poignant insight into the lives of these men and women, from a very wide range of previous occupations and worldly experiences, living the monastic life. Accompanying the photographs are extracts from the simple rules—from the Benedictines, Carmelites and others—that these men and women have elected to follow, and which guide every moment of their lives. This rare glimpse into their lives will forever change the way we imagine life within the walls of a monastery.


About the Author
FRANK MONACO, born in New York, has lived in Europe since 1950 and now resides in London. A foreign correspondent for many years for Jubilee magazine, he has been associated with Rex Features, the London photo agency, which has placed his photographs in more than 400 periodicals throughout the world. His work has been the subject of one-man exhibitions in the United States, the UK and India. He is currently working on his fourth book, on the temples of India.


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Our experience of the rush of the contemporary world often awakens an inner longing for real rest and spiritual depth, but choosing to live cut off from the world is difficult for many to understand. During fifty years as a professional photographer, Frank Monaco has often been welcomed as a guest within the walls of enclosed monasteries and convents. Brothers and Sisters brings together many of the images he has taken of monks and nuns at work, at prayer, and in the service of their communities. The photographs are accompanied by extracts from the simple rules—from the Benedictines, Carmelites, etc.—that these men and women have elected to follow, and which guide every moment of their lives. No reader who sees these photos will be able to imagine life within the walls of a monastery in quite the same way.


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