Religion and society

Art

How ‘La Catrina’ became the iconic symbol of Day of the Dead

On April 13, 1944, thousands of people clashed with police on the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago. The melee was unrelated to U.S. participation in World War II, labor unrest or President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s controversial move to…

Art

Armenians displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh fear their medieval churches will be destroyed

A six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in the South Caucasus, ended on Nov. 9 after Russia brokered a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Under the deal, several ethnically Armenian provinces in Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenians call Artsakh, were…

Art

As spiritualism’s popularity grows, photographer Shannon Taggart takes viewers inside the world of séances, mediums and orbs

The word séance conjures images of darkened rooms, entranced mediums, strange occurrences and spirit voices. For many contemporary audiences, these visions might seem like something out of the past, or perhaps a movie, rather than a living belief system. For…