In 1858, a fourteen-year-old girl reported seeing apparitions of a “small young lady” standing in a niche in a grotto near Lourdes, France. Eventually religious authorities confirmed the apparition as the Virgin Mary, and Lourdes became a shrine where worshippers now pray for healing miracles. Churches were built on the spot and Lourdes became a destination for millions of pilgrims. (Within France, only Paris has more hotels than Lourdes.) The girl who saw the apparition was canonized as a saint in 1933, and statues of “Our Lady of Lourdes” appear in other grottos around the world. I photographed this one in Sucre, and converted it to black and white. By doing so, I abstract the image to make it less literal and more timeless and symbolic. The figure appears more like a person in black and white, and less like the colorfully painted stone statue that it really is.