Brothers and Sisters

Our experience of the rush of the contemporary world awakens in many of us a longing for a place to experience silence, quiet reflection, and days uninterrupted by a constant barrage of external stimulus. But to choose to live cut off from the world—as do monks and nuns—is something many of us find difficult to understand.

During his fifty years as a photographer, Frank Monaco has been repeatedly drawn to spiritual and religious subjects and has often been welcomed as a guest within the walls of enclosed monasteries and convents. Over the course of many years, he recorded the activities in the monasteries of Western Europe.

While reviewing his files of photographs taken in these quiet places, he was struck by the common features of the lives of the monks and nuns in their monasteries and convents. "Further searching," Monaco writes, "revealed many photographs showing the side-by-side engagement that exists between monk and nun in the cell, novitiate, worship, labor, meals, and recreation. They are engaged in the religious life like a family…like brothers and sisters."

Frank Monaco's images provide rare and poignant insight into the lives of these men and women, from a very wide range of previous occupations and worldly experiences, living the monastic life. Accompanying the photographs are extracts from the simple rules—from the Benedictines, Carmelites and others—that these men and women have elected to follow, and which guide every moment of their lives. This rare glimpse into their lives will forever change the way we imagine life within the walls of a monastery.