Christian Lutz
In Jesus' Name
Christian Lutz (1973)
@christianlutzphotography
100% photographer
Bachelor, Ecole supérieure des Arts de l’Image Le 75, Brussels (BE), 1995
In Jesus’ Name
2013–2024
Switzerland
Personal
Pablo Lavalley
Wallpapers
120 × 150 cm
4 wallpapers (120 × 150 cm each)
Blueback paper
Photorotation, Geneva
With the agreement of the ICF church leaders, Christian Lutz photographed the congregation and its followers over the span of a year.
A few days after his book In Jesus’ Name was published, a lawyer, hired by the ICF and representing 21 followers, protagonists in the photographs, filed a complaint and obtained an immediate ban on the book. Christian Lutz reacted by revisiting the banned photographs and delivering new images blacked out with thick banners. It is now impossible to recognise the faces. As an expression of prejudice, the text of the complaints filed by the plaintiffs is printed over this obliteration. From a work banned stems a new, even stronger one. In the urge to interpret images, one tends to project in them one’s own beliefs and doubts, and soon emerges the certainty of seeing in them what was feared.