How I got here

It is no longer possible to take the image featured above. I woke up early one morning in September of 2019 to meet a friend at the steps of Ventura city hall. We were there to take a photograph. After we set up our cameras, we stood there chitchatting and looking down California street into the dark Pacific Ocean. As the sun rose, the figure in front of us was illuminated with the soft golden light of dawn. We snapped our pictures and headed off in search of a coffee shop, not knowing that we were taking the statue of Junipero Serra for granted. In ten months, there would be an empty space where that statue stood.

The summer of 2020 saw a trend of statue removals. Images of problematic figures were coming down all across the country and many felt that Junipero Serra should be included. There were a number of other cases around the state where statues of Father Serra were vandalized and torn down by angry mobs. While the Ventura statue had been vandalized, it had managed to remain standing, in part due to the support of local groups. Despite these efforts, the statue was removed in the dead of night. The removal was seen as a compromise. Remove and find a better home for it rather than see it destroyed.

I took the removal personal. I am a Ventura born Catholic and Junipero Serra is quite literally a local saint. I couldn't take the lies being told about him. Serra was being used as a scapegoat and his reputation was being destroyed, even if his statue was not. Founder of my city and father of my state, I felt that I needed to do something to help restore the good name of this faithful trailblazer. This was the birth of Lepanto.