I grew up in a protestant, Church of Scotland household, with a relaxed, tea-and-cake experience of religion, and as such, the antiquated, solemn, and deathly serious practices of the Catholic faith of some of my friends would leave me bemused. Though the spectre of sectarianism is never far from a conversation on religion in central Scotland, I found the solemnity, the Latin, and the transubstantiation to be baffling. Festivals such as Corpus Christi were something of a mystery to me. By the age of 16, I was agnostic and by my mid-20s, I got up off of the fence to describe myself as an atheist; however, I never lost that curiosity. While lines between church and state are, arguably, somewhat blurred in Poland, and the Catholic church here has – to put it politely – a lot to answer for, I still find the ceremony, and the endless religious holidays fascinating.
The 8th of this month was the feast day of Boże Ciało, or Corpus Christi, so I spent some time out on the streets of Warsaw making some photographs.
