About Via Lucis Photography
Via Lucis Photography and Via Lucis Press are part of a long-term project to document Romanesque and Gothic churches in France and Spain. The projects include the photographs that are represented on this site, a book called France Romanesque which will be finished in 2010, and custom art prints. France Romanesque is illustrated by these photographs, with text by Dennis Aubrey, edited by Ann Hanson. While the library includes exteriors, the primary concentration is on interior architecture, especially vaults, domes, and buttressing which define the Romanesque and Gothic styles.
There is also a section of a sculptural specialty, the Vierges Romanes (Romanesque Virgins). These are 11-13th century stylized wooden statues of the Madonna and Child, usually polychrome but sometimes covered in plate and jewels. More formally, they are known as Sedes Sapientiae, the Throne of Wisdom. A subset of these are the Black Madonnas, which are particularly venerated in Spain and France.
The images represented on this site are just a fraction of the total number of high-resolution digital images in the Via Lucis library. If you have more specific requirements, please contact us with your request.
There is also a section of a sculptural specialty, the Vierges Romanes (Romanesque Virgins). These are 11-13th century stylized wooden statues of the Madonna and Child, usually polychrome but sometimes covered in plate and jewels. More formally, they are known as Sedes Sapientiae, the Throne of Wisdom. A subset of these are the Black Madonnas, which are particularly venerated in Spain and France.
The images represented on this site are just a fraction of the total number of high-resolution digital images in the Via Lucis library. If you have more specific requirements, please contact us with your request.
The Via Lucis collection is now featured at ARTstor in New York City. ARTstor is a nonprofit digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences with a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. The community-built collections comprise contributions from outstanding museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists’ estates.
LICENSING AND PRINTING IMAGES
This website has been created for professionals who wish to license or print images from the Via Lucis library.
If you wish, instead, to order custom framed and matted art prints from the Via Lucis library, please select THIS LINK.
CAMERA EQUIPMENT
We are often asked about the equipment used for shooting these churches. We shoot with two Canon cameras, the 1ds Mark III and the 5D, both with full-frame sensors. Our primary lenses are two tilt-shift lenses; the Canon EF TS-E 17mm f/4L and the Canon 24mm f3.5 TSE L. We also use the Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM (for shooting distant capitals and carvings), the EF 35 f/1.4L USM, and Canon EF 24-105/F4.0L IS USM. For shooting the Vierges Romanes, we add the Sigma 105mm F/2.8 EX DG with a ring flash.
We use Bogen-Manfrotto tripods with geared heads.
All images are archived in, and primarily processed by, Adobe Lightroom.