Toni Greaves

Radical Love is a photo-essay about cloistered nuns and vocations. Following the story of Sister Lauren (who later took the religious name Maria Teresa of the Sacred Heart), Greaves was given rare access to the cloistered Dominican Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary in Summit, New Jersey, for several years as Laura advanced from postulate to novice to professed sister. There is no text beside the introduction and chapter heads, so you receive the photos as a series of images without context and are able to form your own ideas about what a vocation is and what life is like behind the cloister walls. Instead of following captions and working though the framework of the author's titles, you create the text and capture the ideas behind the images yourself, which is a very freeing way of viewing art/photography. The titles and years of each image are given at the back of the book, but it is best enjoyed without peeking at the credits, I think. My favorite photo is probably the one of the Jesus statue having a close encounter with a soccer ball, because epitomizes the simple joys of the cloister and the fact that the nuns are just like you and me, even if they have taken the radical step to reject the world outside the monastery. It is these everyday events of living that life that really come out in Graves work, enhancing and supplementing the more conventional nun or religious images. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in photo-essays, images of religious life, or nuns.… (mer)

This book is stunning. The cover alone-front and back pulls you in immediately. This is a story about a girl name Lauren. She attended college, had a boyfriend, plans of marriage and children when she fell in love with (via a song on You Tube!! I would love to know what the song was) God. She chooses to leave "the world" (her term) and live with the Dominican Nuns of Summit, New Jersey. A cloistered community where prayer is central. After the introduction, you become immersed in her world through the pictures and the pictures alone. No captions. It was unnerving at first to read a book in this format but, I kept going back to it. The more I spent time with it, the more immersed I became. Toni Greaves let's Lauren and her family tell their story through actions. I understand now that no words can capture what she is experiencing. Body language can tell a story = to words on a printed page.

Their is a List of Works page that you can refer to if you want to see how the images were titled.

I would be remiss if I did not copy down the following about Sister Maria of the Cross who's commentary just gutted me and moved me to tears.

" At a later date, Sister Maria of the Cross, then seventy-one years old, told me the story of how she fell "blindingly and irretrievably in love" with God at the age of seven and a half. She entered the monastery at age nineteen and, until her recent passing at age seventy-six, had lived inside its walls for fifty-seven years, rarely leaving. She was an exemplar of the life these nuns live, and of the life that lies ahead for Sister Lauren."… (mer)