Reading Between the Times

I chose to pursue this project because modern spirituality intrigued me for several reasons. Specifically, tarot reading has a global community, but relatively informal organization, unlike the churches and temples of Catholicism and Judaism I was raised in. Lately, amid the pandemic, I’ve seen a rise in the popularity of tarot, specifically on TikTok. It made me curious about why it was trending, and why this diversion from organized religion amid a pandemic that caused people to question all that they knew was happening in the first place. Upon further research, I found that this phenomenon was nothing new–every few decades, a generation of young people tend to lead the charge away from organized religion. This has been shown during times of war or other global conflict–in the  1960s, the hippie movement gave way to the anti-war protests of the 1970s, and Gen Z has dealt with the effects of growing up amid a pandemic, on top of the political upheaval in the aftermath of the Trump administration. Through my lens, I wanted to explore why readers are drawn to the tarot cards, but also how their inspiration varies across generations. The two subjects in this exhibit, Bella and Sandy, are both Irish ex-Catholics who grew up in Massachusetts. Despite their decades of an age gap, I was surprised to find that their stories bore some striking similarities. In this exhibit, my images are displayed in the Celtic Cross tarot spread formation–I chose this to honor their shared Irish heritage, and also because this spread focuses specifically on past, present, and future–a story that is told through the different generations, and how history repeats itself in mysterious ways, and how this practice carries both centuries of tradition and rebellion.