Ex-Voto is the culmination of a five-year photographic journey to Catholic pilgrimage sites in Ballyvourney, Ireland, Mount Grabarka, Poland, and Lourdes, France. The title refers to the physical offerings given in order to fulfil a vow – humble objects such as handmade wooden crosses and pages torn from notebooks – which connect the pilgrim with the landscape.
The project comprises of black and white portraits of pilgrims, landscapes of the sites and still-lifes of the ex-voto objects, captured on large format film. Shot with an objective gaze, the images appear untethered from contemporary life and out of time.
'It is a difficult undertaking, this visual divination of belief. In her reflective, rational, but deeply attentive approach, Alys Tomlinson evokes the silence and the stillness at the core of the spiritual life, but also its mystery and its simplicity, the one inextricably bound up with the other. It pays to spend time with these stark, mysterious images. They go to the very heart of things unseen’. - Sean O’Hagan
Ex-Voto was published by GOST Books in 2019
