Click on the Bodega Church image to enlarge

Bodega Church

I don’t know when it was that I first saw the picture that Ansel Adams took of  the Bodega Church St. Teresa of Avila at Bodega, California.

The print that Ansel Adams took in 1953  of the Bodega  Church was probably in a coffee table book that my dad owned.  The old man was a fan of Ansel Adams.  He owned copies of the Ansel Adams Basic Photo book series.  We still have his copies of the 1962 edition, the books 2-5 in the five book series, don’t know what happened to the copy of book 1.

My dad wanted to travel the west like Ansel did and photograph all the beautiful National Parks.  But he had a family to raise so he got down to business with that instead…although as a family we eventually did see a great part of the American West.

Years later now I pass by that church often on my way out to the Sonoma Coast.  I can’t even count now the multitude of times that I have passed by and looked up at that church.  I always wanted to photograph it in color though.  In perfect afternoon polarized light, with a dark blue sky in the background.

The road leading up to the Bodega Church wasn’t paved at the time Ansel was there.  He must have taken it with a very wide-angle lens as the hill leading up to the church is much steeper than it seems in his photograph.

The Schoolhouse that is also famous from the Hitchcock film The Birds is faintly seen in Ansel’s photograph.

The Bodega Church St. Teresa’s of Avila is actually a very historic church.

The church was built by shipbuilders in 1859 on land donated by Jasper O’Farrell and named after St. Teresa of Avila by local Spanish and Portuguese immigrants.  Archbishop Alemany dedicated the church in 1861 .

The church is still in use today and is the oldest church in continuous use in Sonoma County.  Alfred Hitchcock attended services there while filming The Birds.  The church is also a California Historical Landmark (#820).  The original building was too small and was later expanded by cutting the church in half, pulling the two ends of the small church away from each other, and then building new walls and ceiling to fill in the newly created gap.

The Bodega Church is a quiet, peaceful place.  And a good place to follow Ansel’s tripod holes.