Street ‘Passion’

One way urban photographer Camilo Vergara compels us to acknowledge the humanity of forgotten places is by capturing multiple examples of a ubiquitous object or feature -- as mundane as rusting cars, abandoned service stations or eviscerated trees, or as potentially incendiary as religious iconography.

With these murals depicting the crucifixion of Jesus, Vergara portrays what he calls “a collective Passion of Christ”; images that are talismans as much as objects of devotion.

The way he sees it, each of the three shown here serves a different purpose. The painting on the shed with the palm trees in the distance “looks like somebody’s fantasy -- it doesn’t look like it was commissioned by anybody,” he says.

The mural that seems to absorb the man pushing a shopping cart was a community effort, blessed by the local Catholic priest. “You can see the names of the artists, and they look like names of names of gang members,” Vergara says. “It was directed to the gangs: ‘Be a little more careful, don’t shoot each other.’ ”

The image attached to the machine shop was intended to discourage graffiti. “If someone is going to put some tag on there,” Vergara says, “the mural might lead them to think, ‘Maybe something bad will happen to me if I deface a crucifixion.’ ”