Images Exhibition Specializing in Urban Religion Opens with Panel Dialogue

A pictures exhibition in Trinity College’s Crescent Center for Arts and Neuroscience (CCAN) observes how faith performs out in individuals’s day by day lives, in graffiti and road artwork, and in music and dance in city neighborhood settings.

Urban Devotions: Images of Faith within the City, by Bronx-based photographer David González, was delivered to CCAN’s Poon Family Gallery by Trinity’s Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, which examines the affect of faith on politics, civic tradition, household life, and different points within the United States and around the globe. The exhibition opened with a panel dialogue and reception with the artist on September 26, 2025.

González stated that he was first impressed to {photograph} faith when it helped manage fellow residents within the South Bronx to demand that their neighborhood be renovated and invested in, quite than destroyed and rebuilt. He stated, “I saw the power of practical faith when I saw my whole neighborhood get redeveloped.”

Throughout the panel, González identified particular photos within the gallery and started to inform the viewers the tales concerning the individuals and conditions mirrored in them. He emphasised the need of constructing relationships with the communities he photographed earlier than capturing individuals in their very own environments.

González spoke about how he earned the arrogance of the individuals he images. “I operate from a deep place of love. My work stems from my relationship with my community,” he stated. “My goal is to be as honest as possible, accept people for who they are, and try to understand what they are going through.”

In addition to González, the panel included Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, affiliate professor of faith at Kalamazoo College; Efraín Agosto, most not too long ago a visiting professor at Williams College; and Pablo Delano, Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College. The moderator for the occasion was Leslie Ribovich, affiliate professor of non secular research and public coverage and regulation at Trinity, who is also the director of the Greenberg Center.

Delano and Ribovich collaborated to carry Gonzáles’ pictures to Trinity with the assist of each the Studio Arts Program and the Religious Studies Department. Ribovich stated, “I thought this display would be a great way to talk about some parts of religion that are not as visible in institutional settings.”

Delano stated that he wished to carry the exhibit to Trinity as a result of he was moved by the pictures. “I thought the Greenberg Center was a natural fit to work with,” he stated.

In Ribovich’s course “Religion in Hartford,” college students research how faith and devotion are represented in Hartford, and the exhibition’s spiritual imagery captured in New York City displays most of the identical themes explored at school. Kate Fitzgerald ’26 stated, “I thought it was interesting to hear the stories about the photos and the neighborhoods they were taken in from the person who took them.”

Maldonado-Estrada, an ethnographer and specialist in city faith, spoke about being an observer of private and non-private lifetime of practising faith in a metropolis. “There is intimacy, but that gaze of others is always there because you are sharing the street with so many people,” she stated.

Ultimately, Ribovich stated, the aim of the pictures set up is for the Trinity neighborhood to connect with city environments and see the half faith performs. “I wanted to open people’s eyes to the way that religion operates in a city, and although this is not about Hartford, I do think there are a lot of parallels for us to think about,” she stated.

Urban Devotions: Images of Faith in the City might be open for viewing within the Poon Family Gallery in Trinity’s Crescent Center for Arts and Neuroscience (CCAN), Monday by means of Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., till Friday, October 24, 2025.