Article LinkIn a tent outside the museum, black Pentecostal Christians from rural Tulare County belted out gospel tunes. And a choir from Beit T'Shuvah, reportedly the nation's only Jewish halfway house, sang prayers.
Nahmias, 41, spent three years snapping photos for the exhibit. Traveling from San Quentin to San Diego, he encountered Buddhist prison inmates, transsexual gospel singers, Muslims who fled genocide under Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime and sex workers who worship SantÃsima Muerte, or St. Death, a Mexican folk deity.
The L.A.-based photographer said he hoped his audience would "set aside the judgments you would normally bring to a convicted murderer or a transsexual and understand that everybody has to grapple with a higher power."