With The Faithful - A Journey With Those Who Believe

This project began with the fascination and curiosity about the one thing that is common to all peoples, cultures and religions; faith. Throughout history and in our most recent times we have witnessed the horrors of politicians, bigots and those who have agendas other than those with the interests of humanity at heart, manipulating people through their faith for their own destructive ends.

For me religion has always been about mystery, something incomprehensible, something steeped in the earth, beyond description, and something that has held civilisation together long before the Gods of Fire and Love were even dreamed of.

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What I have chosen to document are the situations where people's personal expressions of their passion is manifested. As we move further from our relationship with the elements, with the pressures of urban life, mixing with economic division and ethnic conflict, there are some who go to extraordinary lengths in search of salvation. Through the passions of theatre and penance people find through quiet and sometimes extreme moments, the path to their salvation.

There also seems to be a radical difference between how people from affluent urban environments express their faith. It also seems that when people exist close to the elements, living a fragile existence the relationship between man, earth wind and fire are much closer. It is also in this environment that miracles, mystery and imagination are working to the full. In the urban, consumerist context where people are experiencing "rebirth", there is almost a reaction against their environment and a struggle to find some escape from it.

It has been to those parts of the world, where the manifestation of Christian faith has held that mystery for me that I have travelled. I have come away of course with questions that I remain unable to answer. This piece of work is not a global survey of Christianity but a documentation of the power and passion of faith in mystery, miracles and superstition - the basis of what I believe religion to be.