Katharsis

We are beings with a curious proclivity to define time. Clocks, calendars, and dates create the illusion that time can be determined, the future can be contained, and the past no longer exists. Psychologically, this desire to categorize chronology has ensnared our consciousness so thoroughly that it struggles to grasp the notion—often explored in quantum physics—that past, present, and future may coexist within a single continuum. In this conception, moments exist in such close proximity to one another that time resembles a woven thread: pull at one end and the entire strand gathers toward the center.

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In Katharsis, Rafael Rodriguez reflects on a trip he took to Portugal some years ago, an experience that unfolded like a transcendental encounter. In his travels, the rigid separation between past, present, and future seemed to collapse as he contemplated the apparition of the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children in the small farming village of Fátima in 1917. Like that apparition, many phenomena across time and borders remain veiled and difficult to explain, among them the universal notion of the soul. Rodriguez channels his inquiry into this intangible yet no less real nucleus burning within each of us through his photography, tracing the ripples it leaves across time.

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The Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary appears in Rodriguez’s vignettes as both monument and witness. Though it is now a well-visited tourist destination, it remains a site that recalls the Virgin Mary’s message to the shepherd children: love, hope, peace, and salvation. What does it mean for such a message to resonate today? Rodriguez suggests that its truth persists precisely because the soul exists beyond the human impositions of time.

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Seen through this lens, his travels through Porto, Lisboa, Fátima, and Nazaré acquire a different significance. Rodriguez’s gaze is no longer that of a tourist moving through space, but of a pilgrim moving through time. In this reflective state, he captures people going about their ordinary lives, each carrying within them a soul capable of piercing through the sheer curtains of our temporal assumptions. Around them rise the familiar markers of modern life: shops, graffiti, bars, offices. These edifices appear solid and permanent, yet they stand much like a strapping young figure destined to age and eventually join the annals of history. Still, they mirror the conditions of our inner lives. How different of an image would emerge, then, were the Divine in us supersedes human folly?

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The achromatic quality of Rodriguez’s photographs strips the earthly realm of its distractions and invites viewers to reflect on the present condition of their own souls—entities that may persist long after the material world has fallen away. His images ask a quiet but pressing question: how might our vision of the world change if we devoted our energy to nurturing what is eternal?

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Written by Jodie Jose