Nicola Dove did portraits of believers of various religious traditions and nationalities. She asked them to recite a prayer or mantra which they could choose for themselves, while looking into the lens of her camera. Then she made a photograph in which she kept the shutter of the camera open for fifteen seconds. The result refers to the power of religious icons and affords a universal picture of devotion around the world. OBSERVANCE is at the same time an homage to the early days of photography, when the exposure times were much longer than now, and when people still believed that a photograph could capture the soul, or was a means of communicating with the dead.

Nicola Dove (b. 1974, New Zealand) is a photographer and visual artist in London. Among other things, she has worked as a set photographer for the feature films Venus and Enduring Love.