The photographs in this exhibition are drawn from my archives, representing close to sixty years of a life in photography. Many of the photographs look into faith from a social perspective—how people of different cultures outwardly display faith ritually—and others of the photographs are abstract or allegorical considerations. Why this variation? Like trust or dignity or wonder, faith is, of course, ultimately an inner phenomenon—strictly speaking, it has never been photographed. The best I can do in pictures is to provoke an imagination of it. It seems to me also an open question how we should distinguish between "true" and "false" objects of faith. We use this word, after all, to describe both tender religious devotion and hateful ideological fanaticism. Again, my hope is to prompt reflection. If you are so moved, I encourage you to write your thoughts, and add them to the public exploration of this spiritual and also worldly topic.

—Laurence Salzmann