The North American Thebaid Book is the fulfillment of a three-year photographic pilgrimage to over thirty Orthodox Christian monasteries across the continental United States and Alaska. My intent has been to create numinous, compelling images that reveal glimpses of the hidden life of Orthodox Christian monasticism, a way of total dedication to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As I put it in my preface to the book:

[There is a] paradox innate to photography: how to use images to point to that which is beyond images. From the very beginning of the North American Thebaid pilgrimage, I embraced this mysterious paradox and made it my goal to convey through visual means the unseen life of monks and nuns of North America. Put another way, the Thebaid Project is not really so much about what is seen, as what is unseen.

See page spreads, images, and order the book here…

This life, this way, has its foundations in the ancient desert monasteries of the Egyptian Thebaid in the 4th century. A thousand years later, the spread of Orthodox Christianity led to a ‘Northern Thebaid’ across the Russian land, stretching from Europe eastward to the Pacific coast. Orthodox monasticism has since spread around the world in an unbroken stream until the present day. 

The North American Thebaid Project was established at the end of 2015 with a small team of volunteers in addition to the photographer, with the blessing of the late Archbishop Paul (Gassios) of Chicago and the Midwest (OCA).  Fundraising to enable this unique photographic pilgrimage was accomplished through online crowdfunding and preorders for the book. A growing group of supporters has helped sustain the project through several years of travel, photography, post-production, book design, pre-press, and ultimately publication. 

In the course of the pilgrimage itself and in the photographic account of this journey, I have sought to contribute to the mission of the Orthodox Church across America and to promote Orthodox Christian monasticism as an essential aspect of that mission. 

The necessity of such a perspective is stressed by Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA): 

It is important to recognize the great contribution that the monastics make to the Apostolic Work of the Church. It has historically been the monasteries that were on the forefront of the missionary endeavors of the Church… 

We are grateful for the example and the life of the monastics, and we need to encourage our children to consider this sacred life.

This book presents Orthodox Christian monastic life as the fullest expression of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It inspires and challenges us all to follow our Lord with 100% of our life, 100% of the time, a call that our monastic brothers and sisters faithfully strive to hear and to follow every day. 

Adapted from the text of the dust jacket of the book.