A Monk’s Interests Captured on Camera

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Eve M. Kahn

Thomas Merton is the subject of a centennial exhibition coming to Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library next month. Credit Estate of John Howard Griffin

KENTUCKY---A forgotten camera said to have been used by the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton will appear in public for the first time on Feb. 2 in a Merton centennial exhibition at Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Merton, who died in 1968, at 53, had taken vows at a Kentucky monastery that decreed he could own few possessions. With borrowed camera equipment, he took about 1,800 photos, creating meditative abstract compositions out of rocks, leaves, wagon wheels and barn siding. [link]