This image is one in a series of croix de chemin (roadside crosses) taken during my December 2022 photographic trip to Québec. There are between 2,500 and 3,000 croix de chemin scattered all over rural Québec, the historic centre of North American Catholicism. Despite the decrease in influence of the Catholic Church during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and the prediction that, as a result, croix de chemin would disappear from the rural landscape, recent surveys have shown that around 80% of the croix that were surveyed in the 70s and 80s are still standing. Croix de chemin are large (15 to 20 feet tall) crosses that where originally “erected to fulfill a vow, to sacralize the land, or to ward off calamities” (Kaell, p. 135). They hark back to the cross that Jacques Cartier erected on the Canadian mainland, in Gaspé, on July 24, 1534 on his first exploration trip of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but also represent their owners’ Catholic devotion and are examples of beautiful rural folk art. Croix de chemin are most often made of wood (though some more modern ones are made of metal) and are decorated with iconography of the Passion. Each year their caretakers try to repaint them and every 40 or 50 years they have to be replaced altogether. There are three main types of croix de chemin: (1) the simple croix de chemin which may have some decorative elements at the end or centre, (2) the croix de chemin featuring instruments of the Passion which are decorated with a lance, nails, hammer, whip, ladder, crown of thorns, and/or rooster and (3) the calvaire, which depicts the crucifixion scene.
The primary reason I wanted to photograph the croix de chemin was that they are wonderful pieces of folk art – made and maintained, sometimes for many decades, by local artisans, and are pretty much unique to Québec in Canada (although emigrants from Québec brought a few to Ontario and Manitoba in the 19th century). I spent many hours of scouting the locations of croix de chemin using the fantastic website
Les Croix de Chemin au Québec and searching out and photographing them to create this series was a highlight of my recent trip. In the end, I photographed almost 40 croix de chemin to create this series.
Kaell, H. (2017) Marking memory: Heritage work and devotional labor at Québec’s croix de chemin. In K. Norget (Ed.),
The Anthropology of Catholicism (pp. 122-138). University of California Press.
Joly, D. (2007). Wayside crosses. In Encyclopedia of French cultural heritage in North America.
www.ameriquefrancaise.org/en/article-296/Wayside_Crosses.html
Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce), Québec, Canada.
I wrote a
blog post about my December 2022 photographic trip to the rural areas of Chaudière-Appalaches (Beauce) and Bas-Saint-Laurent, south and east of Québec City. If you'd like to see some behind the scene shots, video and read some stories about how I shot these images, take a look.
If you'd like to see the rest of the images from this trip, take a look at
my Québec album and if you'd like to see the series within the series - the croix de chemin - there's
an album for them, as well.
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