On 23 January 2011, The Westboro Baptist Church paid a visit to Salt Lake City in order to picket Jews, Episcopals, Mormons, the Sundance Film Festival & a high school. While photographing and filming the picket party at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Salt Lake, I had a moment to speak with Fred Phelp’s daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper. She agreed to bring her group to my photo studio for a quick 20 minute portrait session.
The image below is of Pastor Fred Phelps’ granddaughter Jael Phelps. The images in this gallery speak to the ability of religions to convince otherwise normal people to do strange and, in this case, hateful things.
View the entire gallery and / or license images here.
To see my earlier post on their protest which features a musical mini-documentary on the WBC, click here.
