The Things Not Seen are Eternal

Over a period of two years, Herman Ellis Dyal photographed the interior of the church he had attended as a child in San Antonio, Texas. The resulting photographs show much of the building now unused and form his first monograph, The Things Not Seen Are Eternal.

In 2021, Dyal passed by Riverside Baptist Church on a weekday afternoon, and after not being inside the building for over 50-years, spotted an open door and entered. He began to return regularly to document the interior and the many rooms and spaces which are no longer in use, without electricity and slowly deteriorating. His painterly photographs are devoid of people but heavy with the echoes of past human presence—chairs, toys, robes, furniture, artificial flowers and books—relics of an earlier time. Dyal’s background as an architect is evident in his portrayal of the building, its details and negative space. Multiple doorways lead the viewer through the book, and objects in the photographs often appear as sculptural inventions. A series of archival black and white photographs at the end of the book, show the church in its heyday offering a counterpoint to what remains. Although firmly rooted in one church, the images are representative of a wider pattern of diminishing church attendance across the US.