Apostate

Noun

1.      A person who forsakes his religion, cause, party, etc.

 

When I was seventeen, I fell in love with the quiet boy in school that kept to himself and read his Bible. By my eighteenth birthday, I was a practicing Jehovah's Witness going door-to-door and making secret wedding plans. At first, it was wonderful, but when the congregations discovered I had been secretly dating that boy in the Kingdom Hall, we were separated with nothing more than the promise that I'd see him again, one day when we could be trusted. During my time as a Witness, I was forbidden from celebrating all holidays and birthdays; I could not salute or pay homage to the military; I was instructed to reconstitute my wardrobe to fit God’s modest standards; and ultimately, I created a divide with the closest people in my life for the sake of religion. My life as a Jehovah’s Witness consisted of thirty hours of service a month, meetings and ministry school twice a week, as well as teaching and learning in bible studies twice a week. After two years as a Witness, I realized that I had lost myself completely to obedience and scripture. 

So I left. 

I cut off all contact with most of the people in the congregation, those clothes they made me wear went in a box, and I set about rediscovering who I was if I was no longer a Witness. Apostate is a photographic pseudo-documentary about those lost years of my life as a Jehovah’s Witness. In revisiting and photographing the secret spaces of the church and re-enacting scenes from my former life for my camera, I have reclaimed my role as witness to my own life. This is a coming-of-age story about a seventeen-year-old girl that fell in love and lost herself to God.