‘Covenant’ explores the life of an Indianapolis congregation

Ties that bind an inner-city congregation constructed of ritual, emotion and devotion

Covenant opened last weekend at the Indianapolis Art Museum and runs through Nov. 10.

The 67 black-and-white photographs is the culmination of five years of acquaintanceship among photographer Tyagan Miller, the pastor and the congregation at the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church on Indianapolis’ west side.

Miller, the Riley Lecturer at the IU School of Journalism in Bloom-ington, had begun capturing images that expressed the life of the church and its membership while involved in the POLIS Center’s “Falling Toward Grace” project; a group of Hoosier photographers and writers set about documenting aspects of spirituality and community in the Indianapolis area.


Photo by Tyagan Miller

While that project was completed in 1998, culminating in both an IU Press book and an exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Miller continued on with his association with the congregation at Friendship, which had begun as a storefront church on Michigan Street in 1917 and grew into a church building of its own in 1998 at its current location on Goodlet Street.

Miller participated in a continuous succession of Sunday services, weddings, funerals and other congregational events that allowed him, as an outsider, to examine the ties that bind the church community. A former Indianapolis Public School teacher who had taught at an alternative high school for at-risk youth, Miller had noticed that the African-American teenagers who “were able to struggle effectively against the hardships of inner-city living,” were also the ones who had a deep connection to the life of a church.

Photo by Tyagan Miller

A book from the Friendship project is forthcoming.

Take a look at Miller’s work and listen to an interview at this Digital Journalist Web site:

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0012/covenant_intro.html