In the summer of 1980, Lisa Barlow was driving along Connecticut’s Route 69 in a worn-out rental car when she spotted a massive cross towering above the highway.
Barlow had heard about Holy Land U.S.A. before but had never come face-to-face with the detailed, miniature replica of Jerusalem. The site featured vivid biblical scenes with teachings and scripture quotes etched into concrete.
There was Pilate’s house, an Inn with a “No Vacancy” sign, a white-painted lump representing Lot’s wife turned into salt, and a somber-looking Lucifer locked inside a small dog cage. The display, built two decades earlier from concrete, plaster, wire, and wood, had been only minimally updated with modern materials like plastic and aluminum siding. The cracked “Stairway to Heaven” led up the hill, bordered by a chain-link fence, while the Garden of Eden had been completely swallowed by thick vines beneath a tin canopy. From this vantage point, Barlow first glimpsed the city of Waterbury below, with its church spires and factory smokestacks juxtaposed against the tiny buildings of Holy Land at her feet.
“Before long, it wasn’t just Holy Land that kept drawing me back to Waterbury,” Barlow recalls. “It was the people—their stories captured my heart, my imagination, and ultimately, my love. This is the story of that year, told in pictures.”
Barlow’s photographs of Waterbury and its uniquely American quirks are filled with a deep empathy and layered visual storytelling that reveals something new with each viewing.