I took nearly four hundred, so editing out the poor ones, then organising them into easy access albums, adding minimal captions and getting them into sequence took many hours out of the day. I found none of my three cameras to be in precise date/time sync with each other. Images from different cameras of the same action sequence need rearrangement before display to avoid jerky confusion. Ah well, next time..
It was good to spend time recalling through these images the sequence of bible stories told and realise just how much was packed into the dozen dramatic productions. It was powerful at the visual level, but hearing ancient spoken texts in a variety of north country accents was what lifted it out of the ordinary for me.
I'm still digesting the experiences I had during the Andalusian Semana Santa, built around static artistic images that live at the heart of each parochial community they belong to. Their regional passion plays I didn't have opportunity to find out about or attend, although English people spoke highly of them. York's tradition is similarly both civic and religious in nature and continues to give life to ancient texts and ideas about the life and death of Christ in ways relating to the present day in a characteristically British way, mixing humour and seriousness, speculation, argument and evangelistic appeal.
For a culture such as ours still so in love with verbal discourse and semantics, the living tradition of the York Mysteries is as much a masterpiece as the dramatic tableaux of southern Spain. What a thrill to encounter both traditions so vividly within three months of each other.
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