Greg Reynolds: Jesus Days, 1978 – 1983

From 1978 to 1983, Greg Reynolds served as a youth minister for an evangelical Christian organization, spreading the teachings of the Bible and encouraging young Christians in their faith. When a missionary gave him a 35mm camera, Reynolds–an untrained photographer–began to take pictures of his close-knit community. What emerged was a photo diary–sunlit kodachromes show happy youths strumming guitars at Christian camp, missionary trips to Central America and short-shorted men smiling on the beach during a religious canvassing trip. Reynolds himself appeared the evangelical poster boy throughout this period: he prayed, read the Bible and refrained from sex. It wasn’t until 1983, when he resigned from the organization and came out as gay, that he was able to fully pursue photography and reevaluate his life. The resulting paperback, assembled retrospectively, is a unique document of 1970s-era religious America, its images a powerful account of illusion and disillusion.