A church as a pivotal role in the struggle against apartheid
The Regine Mundi church is a church located in the center of Soweto and was built in 1964. This church is the largest Roman catholic church of all South Africa and can accommodate as much as 5000 – 7000 people! Yes, that’s huge! But this place is also famous because it hosts the “Black Madonna” which is a painting with a black Virgin Mary holding a black Child Jesus.
A political forum for anti apartheid activism
This church has been used as a political forum during Apartheid time and was famous to be at the head of anti Apartheid activism in Gauteng area. That’s why this place was sometime called the Soweto Parliament church.
During Soweto uprising of 1976, many people found refuge in this church but the police entered and opened fire! No one was killed but we can still see bullets in the walls inside.
The church has been renewed after the end of the Apartheid and is still in used! You can see new tainted windows depicting Mandela talking to people at a meeting or another one with Hector Pieterson being carried by Mbuyisa Makhuboafter being shot by South African police.
A gesture of compassion
As all this information and photos are easy to find on Internet, I choose today to show you a different composition from the inside of this church.
What we can see here is visible in all Catholic churches all around the world but I like this composition because in my eyes it looks like a triangle that opens to the top of the photo, in the perfect accomplishment of the gesture of Jesus opening his hands to the humans.
The background is of course not blue but I decided to change the white balance of the shot to get something a bit different, almost dramatic with a contrast between the gesture of the statue and this blue colors that seems a bit uncanny.