The Noorderlicht Photofestival 2007 - Act of Faith

Act of Faith
On faith and conflict, ecstasy and excess

Belief: indispensable for one, unthinkable for another. Experienced individually but lived out collectively, it binds together communities of faith, and separates them. In the world called faith, truth very quickly becomes one's exclusive possession.

In a blistering and extremely timely exhibition 130 photographers from all over the world offer a probing documentary image of this veritable Tower of Babel - and its consequences. Their photographs were made in front of the gates of Paradise - and Hell. Sometimes they are very personal, sometimes detached. At one moment they are confrontational or critical, another loving or surprising - but never indifferent.

At the same time the exhibition illuminates the versatility of photography today as a socially engaged, narrative medium. With photographs varying from portraits to landscapes, diaries to documentation, Act of Faith is a journey through the world and through photography: a double intention that has characterized the Noorderlicht Photofestival from its very beginning.


Is faith permissible? Or is faith compulsory? How sacred is the line separating church and state today, long the unquestioned foundation of Western democracy? How firm is the theory of evolution? How conceivable is unbelief?

Belief: indispensable for one, unthinkable for another. Experienced individually but lived out collectively, it binds together communities of faith, and separates them. In the world called faith, truth very quickly becomes one's exclusive possession.

In a blistering and extremely timely exhibition 130 photographers from all over the world offer a probing documentary image of this veritable Tower of Babel - and its consequences. Their photographs were made in front of the gates of Paradise - and Hell. Sometimes they are very personal, sometimes detached. At one moment they are confrontational or critical, another loving or surprising - but never indifferent.

At the same time the exhibition illuminates the versatility of photography today as a socially engaged, narrative medium. With photographs varying from portraits to landscapes, diaries to documentation, Act of Faith is a journey through the world and through photography: a double intention that has characterized the Noorderlicht Photofestival from its very beginning.