Women in Prayer

“One need only go into an untouched village church, to the cemetery in Eberndorf on All Saints’ Day or up Hemma Mountain or Liesna Mountain on certain holidays: the people come together and offer a host of scenes where one can effortlessly discover the great form, timeless occurrence and image-filled mystery that are behind anecdotes and folklore. I am again and again fascinated by that which I see as the symbol of human primal fear, the image of the praying farm woman: erect, serious and full of surrender. It is not unusual for me to tear open my eyes in amazement that this archaically great form and mythical rapture are real, the reality of our day and nothing conjured up from afar or conserved in a museum,” wrote Werner Berg in Lower Carinthia, My Adopted Homeland.