c. 2003 Religion News Service

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. _ With clouds of spray paint hanging thick in the air, photographer Caroline Davis was scrambled on a late October day to renovate a suite on the third floor of the Dr. Pepper Building here.

On the walls are the distinctive icons that comprise her life calling _ pictures of river baptisms.

Davis, a recipient of two Alabama Arts Council grants for her work in preserving images of outdoor baptism, wants everyone to have a chance to see her pictures and hosted the opening for the Caroline Davis Photography Studio and Gallery for a show featuring the photos of what some believe is a dying tradition.

“The state of Alabama funded me for these pictures,” Davis said. “I would love for the people of Alabama to be able to see them. I was opening a studio and decided, `Why not make it a gallery and let people come see them?”’

Her photographs offer a glimpse into the way rural churches formerly baptized converts, a method that is now disappearing. A collection of 23 of her baptism photos has been displayed across the state in Alabama museums.

When Davis was a small child in Tuscaloosa, her nanny sang her to sleep with the hymn, “Wade in the Water, Children.” Annie Morgan, the former nanny, had been baptized in a river as a child in Selma. The hymns she sang were the same ones sung at river baptisms.

Davis grew up to become a photographer who specializes in underwater photography. She has used that technique to immortalize images of baptism in the river _ a dying tradition in Alabama and other states where it once was considered a standard point of entry to Christian faith in the Deep South.

Though she now seems to have been born to take pictures of outdoor baptisms, she accidentally swam into her first one. While scuba diving in the Grand Cayman Islands in 1997, she encountered a group of Jamaicans who were conducting a baptism in the water. That same summer, Davis, a pilot, was flying in south Alabama and saw a river baptism. Shortly after that, a friend called and invited her to take pictures at a river baptism. Then church members would tell her about other baptisms.

Some of the pictures are in rivers or creeks; others are in baptismal pools dug in the ground and formed with concrete blocks, in towns like Boligee. Her photographs were all taken in Greene, Sumter and Hale counties. Most of them show the action from both underwater and above.

Her underwater camera equipment couldn’t penetrate the silt-filled water in some of the rivers.

Davis still gets calls from the rural churches, alerting her to possible baptisms. But she said this summer was a low-water mark for her specialty.

“It was tough this summer,” Davis said. “Some of the churches didn’t have a new candidate to be baptized.”

A few predominantly black, rural Primitive Baptist churches still baptize in rivers or creeks. “Because these churches are so small, it’s unpredictable,” Davis said. “It might be canceled, it might rain. They don’t know when they’re going to baptize until that day. You don’t know when someone’s going to come forth.”

There are very few river baptisms still going on. Many of the churches that traditionally baptized in rivers typically quit as soon as they could afford a new building with an indoor baptismal pool, she said. Some are ashamed of river baptisms, because it means the church is too poor to build an indoor baptismal.

The photographs are all in black and white to convey the sense of an ancient tradition kept alive, said Davis, who was baptized by sprinkling as an infant in a Presbyterian church.

River baptisms are rarely planned out in advance _ she usually has very little notice. Davis spends a lot of time talking to church members, learning about when they are having revivals and whether there are any converts. The baptisms are usually immediately after a revival, if there are any converts.

It’s not unusual for only one person to be baptized. That means Davis has only a few clicks of the shutter to capture an emotional moment that lasts 10 minutes at the most. One church in Livingston that formerly baptized in the river stopped when there were reports of an alligator living in the water.

On occasion, some people didn’t want to be photographed at all and asked her to leave. She did. Davis doesn’t name any of the churches or people who appear in her pictures, to protect their privacy.

“I work with people I have a good rapport with,” Davis said. “I let them know I’m just photographing a dying tradition. I’m not going to take advantage of them.”

DEA END GARRISON