A new photography book combines religious kitsch, southern mythology, and eerie occult horror.

A crucifix made from Kraft cheese slices sitting on a dirt road. Poltergeist-y mist coming seeping through a sunlit door. Two bedsheet ghosts driving a car. These are just a few of the funny and strange photos included in Maury Gortemiller’s new book Do The Priest in Different Voices, a collection of images inspired by the photographers’ bible-heavy childhood memories. Growing up, religious illustrations helped him conjure the unseen and make the Bible’s written words – which felt abstract and inaccessible – feel tangible, palatable and worth contemplation. His work is a peculiar, contemporary take on these narratives, often infused with mythology from the American South where he grew up and currently lives and works.

We spoke to discuss everything from the project’s origins to Gortemiller's relationship with religion and his love for horror movies.

Maury Gortemiller in conversation with Jon Feinstein

Alexander Binder is a wizard creator of imaginary worlds. Growing up in Germany’s Black Forest in the 1980’s, his pre-internet (and pre-Kanye West) childhood and limited athletic abilities sparked a love for old fairytales, comic books and fantasy literature, as well as science fiction and horror movies. Over the years, these obsessions accumulated into a mental archive of psychedelic stories and imagery, which have had a major influence on his photographic practice for more than a decade. Binder’s upcoming book with Tangerine Press, Kristall ohne Liebe, meaning "The Crystal without Love,” uses various mystical symbols to draw an ongoing tension between competing forces of darkness and light. From a distance, this might sound like the perfect recipe for a late 1990’s mall-goth picture book, but it’s executed with a sensitivity that is smart, thoughtful and aesthetically riveting. And it's even stranger when viewed while listening to Black Sabbath’s N.I.B.

Maury Gortemiller Conjures the Unseen With Terror and Cheese

Alexander Binder's Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy