Lived Religion in the Digital Age Opens Photography Exhibit 'Belief, Unbound'

10/04/2019

The Lived Religion in the Digital Age project will open a photography exhibition, Belief, Unbound, on Oct. 8.

Belief, Unbound is a public art collaboration between Ohio-based photographer Lauren Pond and the Lived Religion in the Digital Age project at Saint Louis University, an initiative that explores religion as it is lived in the world around us, in our own lives, and as it traverses multiple formations of the local, the digital, and the public.

Pond’s photographs, displayed on banners along the construction fence for the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (across from Busch Student Center), confront passersby with questions of religious diversity, migration and the urban experience, the ordinary and the divine.

An opening reception will be held from 3-5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, in the Busch Student Center Amphitheater. The photos will remain on display through the end of the year. 

Pond will give a public talk on this exhibit from 4-5:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11 in the Anheuser-Busch Auditorium in Cook Hall.

The Lived Religion project is co-directed by Rachel Lindsey, Ph.D., assistant professor, and Pauline Lee, Ph.D., associate professor, both in Saint Louis University’s Department of Theological Studies. 

With a $400,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, Lindsey and Lee are exploring where people experience religion in the St. Louis region and are in the process of creating a digital map and database to show what they’ve found. While the map will include churches, mosques, temples and other houses of worship, it will also feature places and public art that isn't usually considered within a religious perspective.

The project asks people to think outside the box and relinquish specific definitions of religion to delve into details of lived experience. The findings will be available to the public on a web site created by SLU’s Walter Ong, S.J., Center for Digital Humanities.