Photographing the Holy Face of Jesus

Kathryn Swegart tells the fascinating story of that famous first photograph of the Shroud of Turin.

Does the date May 28th ring a bell for you? Is there any historical significance to that day? You may be surprised at the answer. I give May 28th a resounding yes as an important moment in Catholic history.

On that day in 1898, the Church made what was to become a historic decision. Pope Leo XIII allowed photographer Secondo Pia to take the first photograph of the Shroud of Turin. As Secondo hauled lights, box camera, and tripods into the cathedral, he did not know what to expect. After all, outwardly, the mysterious cloth seemed to hold the faint image of a bearded man. For centuries, many of the faithful believed it to be the burial shroud of Jesus.

Photographing the Shroud

Secondo started a generator and turned on the light. He placed the camera on the tripod, set up a bellows behind the camera and placed a delicate glass plate inside the camera. The plate was covered in chemicals designed to capture the image. His assistants held electric lights over the 14-foot-long cloth. Secondo removed the lens cap, pushed the button, and took the photograph. Quickly, they gathered up the equipment and headed back to his darkroom.

By now it was midnight. Secondo hoped that he had captured a visible image of the cloth. He hurried on into the night, turned a corner, and burst into his studio. He set up his darkroom where the precious glass plate would be developed.

Secondo put on his work apron and gloves, poured chemicals into a developing tank, and submerged the plate into the solution. It would take some time for the image to emerge. Many doubts raced through his mind. Few photographers had ever used electric lights in a photography session. Thomas Edison had only invented the incandescent light bulb twenty years earlier. Secondo did not feel like a pioneer in photography. In fact, he felt like his experiment was on the verge of failure. All he could do was lean over the developing tank and wait.

And then it happened.

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The image of a crucified man appeared. A face emerged from the photographic plate. It was the face of a bearded man with long hair and a swollen eye. It was the kind of injury sustained by a punch. With great care, Secondo spread another chemical over the plate to seal the image, thus preventing it from fading. Secondo picked up the glass plate and studied it carefully. It was the face of Jesus! How serene was that face, not that of a man filled with pain. Secondo remembered a verse from the Old Testament:

He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain,
Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. (Isaiah 53:3)

The Face of Jesus, Captured on Film

At that instant, Secondo felt his own heart break at the cruelty of man and the suffering of Jesus. Stunned by the revelation, he nearly dropped the plate. This is the face of Jesus! Over and over, the thought raced through his mind. Secondo Pia had just taken an astounding photograph. By some unknown means, the faint image on the Shroud was a negative. Take a photograph of a negative and you get a clear image of the subject.

Decades later, an Italian nun named Sister Maria Pierina de Micheli created the Holy Face medal using Secondo’s image. In 1958, Pope Pius XII declared a new liturgical memorial honoring the Holy Face of Jesus. It appears on the Church calendar on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.

Secondo Pia did not live to witness this momentous event, but his photography spurred science to study the Shroud, revealing hidden secrets. For instance, scientists discovered a 3D image embedded in the cloth, a hologram, bearing the body of a crucified man. It appears that an instantaneous burst of radiation may have created the image. Scientists can find no trace of paint pigments. Pollen analysis reveals that the Shroud came from first-century Jerusalem. The blood —type AB — matches that of the blood found in Eucharistic miracles. The man on the Shroud has been tortured and crucified with wounds matching biblical accounts of the Passion. Despite using the most advanced technological equipment, modern scientists cannot duplicate the mysterious image.

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