ROOM: GRAND D
Session-General Interest
A Jesuit’s Vision of the World
As a photographer, I see the world through the lens of who I am and the life I’ve lived. I can’t help but photograph from the life of faith that I’ve grown into as a priest over the past 50 years.
Often I am asked if being a priest effects my photography. My answer is always, “Yes, it has everything to do with it.” For me it’s hard to separate the creative process of seeing from prayer. Both can be contemplative acts. Both involve an openness to the Spirit — a willingness to let go of one’s presuppositions and go with the hunches and intuitions that arise deep within one’s heart where I believe the Spirit speaks within each of us.
I try to live a quote from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation:
“HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO REACH YOUR OWN PERFECTION BY LEADING SOMEONE ELSE’S LIFE. . . . YOU MUST HAVE THE HUMILITY TO WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION IN A DARKNESS WHERE YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY ALONE. . . . IT TAKES HEROIC HUMILITY TO BE YOURSELF AND TO BE NOBODY BUT THE MAN OR ARTIST GOD INTENDED YOU TO BE.”
Jesuits have a mission — “Faith doing Justice.” I photograph to tell the stories of people who have no voice. Hopefully I can help others understand and work to change unjust social structures.
Don Doll, S.J. is a Jesuit priest and well-known photographer whose work has been featured in National Geographic, [Hunters of the Bering Sea, June 1984, and The Athabascans along the Yukon, February, 1990] and a number of the Day in the Life of… books, including America, California, Italy, Ireland, Passage to Vietnam, and Christmas in America.
In September, 2012, Magis Productions with Creighton University Press published A Call to Vision: A Jesuit’s Perspective on the World, a 224 page coffee table book with 188 of his photographs from his fifty year career as a photographer.
Doll recently received the International Understanding Through Photography Award from the Photographic Society of America; in January of 2016, Doll judged the PSA 83rd International Photography Competition.
Since 1969 Doll has lived and worked at Creighton University, in Omaha, Nebraska, where he is Professor Emeritus of Journalism holding the Charles and Mary Heider Endowed Jesuit Chair.
Since 2005, Doll has photographed for the Jesuit Refugee Service in Uganda, SouthernSudan, Burundi, Rwanda, the Congo, Chad, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
His work can be seen on his website: http://magisproductions.org.
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