The Triptych
Located in the chapel narthex, Lumen is a striking triptych by Scottish photographer Kieran Dodds. Captured from a dramatic low angle inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the image looks straight up into the dome of the Rotunda, transforming the church’s heavy, ancient architecture into a weightless, spiritual landscape. At its center, a brilliant shaft of natural sunlight pierces the oculus and cuts through the cavernous interior to illuminate the cross atop the Aedicule – the shrine encompassing the traditional site of Jesus Christ’s burial and resurrection. Through this stark interplay of deep shadow and radiant light, Dodds constructs a powerful visual metaphor for hope, divine intervention, and the bridge between heaven and earth.
Light functions here as both a physical reality and a sacred metaphor. Today, we measure light through the physical laws of electromagnetism defined by scientists like James Clerk Maxwell – using terms like lumen and lux. Yet our medieval forebears also understood lumen in a deeper, revelatory sense: as the unveiling of hidden meaning, a mystery art is uniquely suited to explore.
Dodds’ work captures this dual nature. It is simultaneously a study of a single, fleeting moment of light hovering over the empty tomb, and an emblem of the eternal light sought by worshippers for millennia to unify the earthly with the heavenly. It evokes the tension present in the Gospel of John between transcendence and immanence, division and unity.
Notice how the central beam of light in the triptych appears fractured. This deliberate, out-of-sync composition offers a playful nod to the surprising, unexpected nature of the resurrection accounts – narratives witnessed thousands of years ago that remain at the heart of the Christian faith. It invites the viewer to complete the picture in their own mind. A smaller, complete version displayed opposite in the hall reveals the unbroken beam, offering a quiet counterpoint to our experience of the world: though creation may often seem fractured beyond repair, the light becomes life when we recognize the true light coming into the world.