Looking at one of the Critical Mass Book Finalists

Photographer Toni Greaves was born and raised in Australia, lived in the UK and now splits her time between Portland and New York. Her career as an Art and Creative Director has helped shaped her design sense, and recently, Toni was named one of the “30 Emerging Photographers to Watch” by PDN Magazine. She has an extensive list of editorial clients and is known for creating exceptional documentary work that sees beyond what is immediately apparent.

Her Critical Mass Finalist series is titled, Radical Love, and it explores life within a cloistered monastic community.

The first thing that struck me when I entered the cloistered Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary was the light and glow of the young women in love, accompanied by an overall sense of happiness and well being. Women in love, the kind of love that you see on the face of a dear friend who is captivated by their most recent paramour…a love that you hope, for their sake, will not fade.

Sister Maria of the Cross describes herself as falling “blindingly and irretrievably in love” (with God) at the age of 7 1/2. She entered the monastery at 19, and has now been there for 52 years, rarely leaving its doors.

The Dominican Nuns of Summit, New Jersey are a Roman Catholic cloistered monastic community. The monastery of 21 Nuns range in age from 22 to 92 years, Some of the nuns have been in the monastery for as long as 62 years. The youngest nun, at the time of starting this project, had been there for just one month.

Images from Radical Love