I have always been captivated by the profound and revolutionary declaration in Genesis 1:27: “So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” This art installation, The Image of God, is a visual meditation on that sacred mystery. It seeks to explore two fundamental questions: What does it truly mean to bear the divine image, and how must that truth radically shape the way we see and treat one another?

The work itself is a collage, a great chorus of diverse human faces. Here, the vulnerable gaze of a Palestinian child is presented alongside the regal portrait of the Queen of England; the face of a contemporary leader like Ibrahim Traore joins those pulled from historical archives. This collection is intentionally varied, meant to reflect the beautiful, complex, and boundless diversity of God’s image expressed in humanity. It is a glimpse of the Kingdom of God, not as a distant reality, but as a present possibility—a community where every individual is seen, known, and held in equal love and immeasurable value.

History, however, bears painful witness to our tragic tendency to forget this truth. Cultures repeatedly cycle through devastating eras of dehumanization, a sinister pretext used to justify unimaginable acts of cruelty. This lie—that some are less than human, less than worthy, less in the image of God—is the core of every genocide that has scarred our world, a tragedy that continues in our own time.

This installation stands as a firm and prayerful rejection of that lie. It is a visual sermon arguing that every person, without exception, bears the indelible mark of the Creator. When we turn away from this concept—especially when we twist religion to bolster our own biases and create a false, tribal god in our own image—we are committing a profound spiritual violence.

Ultimately, The Image of God is an invitation. If we wish to know God more deeply, I believe we must learn to truly see one another. The divine is not an abstract concept to be found only in scripture or prayer; it is radiantly present in the faces of those around us. To recognize His image in all of humanity—in the friend and the stranger, the familiar and the foreign—is a sacred act. For it is in gathering this diverse, complicated, and holy tapestry of people that we catch our clearest and most breathtaking glimpses of God.

A Note on the Process: The images in this compilation were respectfully gathered from public domain sites, historical archives, and my own personal photographs to create a representation of our shared human family.