Photographing sacred areas the world over – Deseret Information

Val Brinkerhoff’s quest to {photograph} sacred areas world wide started with a curiosity in regards to the shapes and symbols of the temples and tabernacles of his personal religion. “I wanted to really understand what a temple was communicating,” he recollects. “I knew the (Latter-day Saint) standpoint, but I wanted to study sacred architecture of many different faiths.”

The quest led the then-associate professor of images at Brigham Young University throughout 45 international locations over 5 years, documenting every part from standing stone circles in Scotland to Islamic mosques, from Catholic cathedrals to historical pyramids. As he studied on the huge stones of Stonehenge, the angled tight joints in Incan partitions and hovering steeples in Europe, he noticed patterns that communicated themes of connection between earth and heaven.

Ancient constructions like Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza incorporate exact alignments with the celebs and the solar. Traditional Christian church steeples with sq. bases, octagonal midsections and spherical tops symbolize the development from earthly to heavenly realms.

“It’s really a visual language,” Brinkerhoff explains in what he desires folks to see within the 1000’s of photographs he created from his journeys. “I wanted to teach people how to read a building like a book and understand the language.”

To Brinkerhoff, 69, understanding sacred structure reveals humanity’s common craving for the divine. The constructions he photographed have been constructed throughout millennia by numerous cultures however converse a typical visible language about our relationship with the sacred — a religious heritage embedded in stone that may encourage believers immediately.

This story seems within the April 2026 concern of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.