Making Space
Noel Bowler

Making Space provides a unique record of the expansion and development of Islam in contemporary Ireland. Noel Bowler’s photographs reveal the quiet transformation of residential, industrial and rural locations into spaces where Ireland’s Muslim communities gather to pray. Making Space enriches our collective culture, gently persuading us to engage with these places and what happens, daily and weekly, in them. It is a timely counterpoint to contemporary global culture’s paranoia concerning the spread of Islam. With a subtle, spare aesthetic, Bowler’s images testify to the ways in which our everyday surroundings can provide the setting for spiritual experience.

Noel Bowler is a Photographer and Educator. Born in Ireland (b.1978). He holds an MFA in photography from University of Ulster, Belfast and a BA (Hons) degree in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport. His work has been exhibited worldwide including New York Photofestivel and Les Recontres d’Arles, with recent solo exhibitions in Gallery of Photography, Ireland and Impressions Gallery, England. Bowler has nominated for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize in 2011 and for the Prix Pichtet Photography Prize in both 2012 and 2015. His most recent body of work Union will be published by the Kehrer Verlag in 2015. He is currently a Lecturer in Photography at University Campus Suffolk.
noelbowler.com
(source: https://newirishworks.com/project/noel-bowler/)

The Gallery of Photography