Before looking through Lisa Barlow’s incredible new photography book, I had never heard of Holy Land USA or the nearby village of Waterbury – but, by the end, I felt I knew it and its people.
Shot in the early 1980s, Holy Land USA by Lisa Barlow had been patiently waiting in a box as a set of negatives in a New York basement for the last 40 years, only recently unearthed due to the pandemic.
With the assistance of esteemed photography book publisher Stanley / Barker, the collection of stunning black-and-white photographs was transformed into a new photography book. Now that the work has finally been shared, it is receiving the long-overdue recognition it deserves.
After stumbling across a manmade model representation of the Holy Land in Connecticut, Barlow needed to know more. What at first glance looked like a fun kitsch diorama, had a deeper meaning to the population of its neighboring town…