Moscow, March 22, 2011
Photographer Gerard Gascuel, who worked with Marcel Marceau and Salvador Dali and is now Hieromonk Gerasim, says he decided to become a monk after hearing an Athos monk singing.
"I was 33 when the editor-in-chief of an influential Japanese magazine sent me to Greece to make a report about life of Athos monks," Father Gerasim was quoted as saying by the Rossijskaya Gazeta daily.
Going around the monasteries he came to one that observed the ancient tradition of keeping the skulls of reposed monks.
"I went into the crypt, and then my life divided into "before" and "after." On the way back, I met a Greek monk and we talked about meaning of life. His English was poor... And suddenly he started singing!" Father Gerasim recalls.
It was then that he decided to become a monk.
"I made a decision in few seconds. Having returned to France, I delivered my report to the magazine, sold my estate and became an ordinary monk on Mt. Athos. I spent many years in the Holy Land at St. Sabbas Monastery in the Judean desert. I met my spiritual father there. I realized that death is not the end," Father Gerasim relates about his spiritual path.
He became a monk, but he is still a photographer, even though he has founded and become abbot of an Orthodox monastery in the French town of Cevennes.
An exhibition of Brother Jean's (he is known among other artists by this name) is currently taking place in Nizhny Novgorod.
