Faith, Belief and Superstition in Donegal

I have taken many images all over County Donegal and because I am an immigrant to Ireland, I have focussed on areas that I regard with curiosity, places and experiences that I have not witnessed in my own country. In this part of Ireland, this falls to the scenic and the religious. I do not have strong religious beliefs and it is very much as a self-imposed outsider that I visit areas of faith in Ireland, be they churches, holy wells, shrines or fairy trees, they all represent someone’s faith.

I am a curious audience, fascinated by the fact that someone can, on their way to Mass, drive past a fairy tree (which nobody will move because of evil spirits), and stop at a holy well that has strong Pagan origins, but has been unofficially adopted by the Catholic faith, to collect water or to leave a token of thanks or faith. I have also always been attracted to the scenic and the picturesque and I am constantly overawed when I see a well-tended holy well in an otherwise remote or barren land, or a church that has been built by the edge of a lake, at the base of a mountain. It makes me consider with great reverence, the faith that someone has had to firstly build and then to visit and tend these sites of faith. For me, it accentuates the picturesque beauty of the area – and my images show my love of both of these aspects of Donegal, of how people can express their faith in different ways and in such beautiful, yet often in remote areas