*3 nephi 10:13 (waiting for the rapture)*

SAME SUN, DIFFERENT SAINTS

IMAGES & WORDS BY JONATHAN LOVETT

Since moving to Utah from New York City, I have had to confront religious trauma from being raised around the Christian Science Church and being queer. I never realized how much trauma I held in my body from that experience until I moved to a place so deeply connected with religion–particularly The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS). At the same time, I felt drawn to the Great Salt Lake in a way that I could not explain immediately. Through the making of this work I have connected with the Lake in the sense that we are both bodies suffering at the hands of religion. In LDS doctrine it says to make a paradise out of the desert. This is done today using water that should be going to the Salt Lake to create lush green lawns, support landscaping, and agriculture.

2 nephi 26:4-6 (buried cables near Northrop Grumman testing site)

genesis 6:6 (drying salt lake bed)

job 38:4-18 (largest northrop grumman testing site in the usa)

the apocalypse 566:1-11 (receding waters)

I have been asking myself the question: are we not both bodies that have been sucked dry by religion? When I was a child my mother passed away from cancer and refused any sort of treatment due to religious beliefs, and turned to the Bible instead. I am putting this here as context to where much of my religious trauma comes from. All images in this series are self portraits, portraits of the Lake, and images of land usage surrounding the Lake. All images are titled with passages from the Bible, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and the Book of Mormon.

“When I think about the Salt Lake I feel a deep empathy. The obsession with creating a garden of Eden in the desert drains water that belongs to the Lake. What would it mean if we accepted that the Salt Lake is already a garden of Eden? ”

— Jonathan Lovett

The Salt Lake is already a giver of life capable of nurture if we only were to nurture it in reciprocity. The Salt Lake supports and incredible amount of biodiversity. It offers a home for many members of the human and more than human communities. In that way is it not already a garden of Eden? If the Salt Lake dries, our oasis in the desert will also cease to exist. If the Salt Lake dries, so does any hope of a habitable Salt Lake Valley. We must accept that we already have our desert oasis and focus on saving it. We must learn to connect with the Great Salt Lake in a deeper, more meaningful way. In a sense, this is what I am aiming to do in this project by tying our bodies together–however different they may seem.