We Became Everything
George Voronov
“We Became Everything” is an attempt to photograph what a spiritual experience feels like.
Spending time with young people in religious communities and on spiritual retreats, I found that all those photographed shared permutations of one core conviction. This was a belief in the existence of two worlds. These are our familiar 'real' world as well as an elusive and mysterious spiritual world which lies beyond the boundaries of normal perception.
The idea of photographing a link between these worlds, a nexus where the veil between them is thinnest, became a subject of fascination. Almost imperceptible but to those dedicated to their pursuit, these moments when one becomes aware of one world bleeding into the other are what we have come to know as religious experiences.
They are fleeting revelations, subtle rifts in reality, and a feeling of connection to the divine. In these instances, the banal gives way to the sublime. They are metaphysical decisive moments.
George Voronov (b. 1993) is a fine-art and documentary photographer currently based in Dublin, Ireland. He is a co-founder of Junior, a print-only photographic journal, and arts organisation that celebrates emerging Irish photography. He holds an MFA in photography from the Belfast School of Art where he studied under Ken Grant, Donovan Wylie, and Haley Morris-Cafiero. In “We Became Everything” George Voronov attempts to photograph what a spiritual experience feels like.
Spending time with young people in religious communities and on spiritual retreats throughout Ireland, Voronov found that all those photographed shared permutations of one core conviction. This was a belief in the existence of two worlds. Our material world which we all perceive as well as a second, mysterious spiritual world.
The idea of photographing a link between these worlds, a nexus where the veil between them is thinnest, became a subject of fascination. Unpredictable and almost imperceptible but to those dedicated to their pursuit, such links take the form of fleeting revelations, subtle rifts in reality, and a feeling of connection to the divine. In these instances, the banal gives way to the sublime. They are metaphysical decisive moments.