  We develop a path integrals approach for analyzing stationary light
propagation appropriate for photonic crystals. The hermitian form of the
stationary Maxwell equations is transformed into a quantum mechanical problem
of a spin 1 particle with spin-orbit coupling and position dependent mass.
After appropriate ordering several path integral representations of a solution
are constructed. One leaves the propagation of polarization degrees of freedom
in an operator form integrated over paths in coordinate space. The use of spin
1 coherent states allows to represent this part as a path integral over such
states. Finally a path integral in transversal momentum space with explicit
transversality enforced at every time slice is also given. As an example the
geometrical optics limit is discussed and the ray equation is recovered
together with the Rytov rotation of the polarization vector.
