LIEGE.- Even if it lies, the image attracts in the way light does and hypnotizes us. If, though, it tells the truth, it reveals more than reality and leads us to awareness of a higher complexity beyond its frame. The most troubling is that the image is lying and telling the truth at the same time. Its power to enthrall and to prove go hand in hand, for better and for worse. Seeing and believing will be the two key words of this 9th International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts of Liège. Between these two words, between image and belief, there is an inextricable link that BIP2014 would like to question by presenting a selection of art works, which will combine documentary visions, installations and sculptural approaches. Throughout this eclectic selection, mystification and the sacred will have their place, many times tied to each other.

THE THEME:
The image is a source of promises. Even if it lies, the image attracts in the way light does and hypnotizes us. If, though, it tells the truth, it reveals more than reality and leads us to awareness and to the comprehension of a higher complexity beyond its frame. The most troubling is that the image is lying and telling the truth at the same time. Its power to enthrall and to prove go hand in hand, for better and for worse. The ques- tion is not to decide between what is true and what is false, but, on the contrary, to take full measure of this unchanging vagueness in our relation to the image and its « truth ». An unsteadiness which makes us swallow just anything, which determines our point of view or our opinion on an event, but which also arouses emotions, and moves us, because the pow- er and efficiency of phantasmagorias, whether sweet or cruel, is closely related to our desire for mirage.

Seeing and believing will be the two key words of this 9th In- ternational Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts of Liège. Between these two words, between image and belief, there is an inextricable link that BIP2014 would like to question by presenting a selection of art works, which will combine documentary visions, installations and sculptural approaches. Throughout this eclectic selection, mystification and the sa- cred will have their place, many times tied to each other... Seeing and believing are strongly embedded in Christian tra- dition, and this cultural basis has, until nowadays, its conse- quences on our relationship to images, depending on if you are a believer or non-believer. Despite the ban of the second commandment of the Bible (in contrary to Judaism which fol- lowed, and to Islam, which condemns any representation), Christianity has produced images that had an iconic status and served as such in worship service. However, the quarrel between the iconoclasts and iconodules during the 8th and 9th centuries shows that, when it comes to belief in the image, the frontier between the eikon (the icon; here the image is a medium that allows reaching the unpresentable divinity and whose status is symbolic) and the eîdolon (the idol; here the image is venerated for itself, just like if it embodied the divin- ity in truth and reality) is thin.

In our western culture, the religious and metaphysical ties of the image have imposed an imaginary of the ?non-painted im- age" over the centuries, produced by impression, transfer or imprint - amongst them photography - and following photog- raphy, film and other means of mecanical reproduction of the visible - have come and revealed an immense power. Daniel Grojnowski doesn't hesitate in his book Photographie et Croy- ance [Photography and Belief ] to announce that ?photography, even if it's the result of a multiplicity of constantly renewing processes, preserves a stable status in the public's mind : an authentic capture of the real." He even goes further by claim- ing that ?all photography is Christian" because of the fact that it calls for adherence.

In our western culture, the religious and metaphysical ties of the image have imposed an imaginary of the ?non-painted im- age" over the centuries, produced by impression, transfer or imprint - amongst them photography - and following photog- raphy, film and other means of mecanical reproduction of the visible - have come and revealed an immense power. Daniel Grojnowski Grojnowski doesn't hesitate in his book Photographie et Croy- ance [Photography and Belief ] to announce that ?photography, even if it's the result of a multiplicity of constantly renewing processes, preserves a stable status in the public's mind : an authentic capture of the real." He even goes further by claim- ing that ?all photography is Christian" because of the fact that it calls for adherence.

On the basis of this temptation, of this attraction it is rather hard to resist to, power, clearly identified or rather nebulous, massively uses this force of visual persuasion for trying to convince us, on a conscious or unconscious level. Nowadays, the fanatism of the image and its suite of effects of belief takes on a dimension never reached before - maybe in reaction to a society which claims to be rational. Media and communica- tion industries, religious and all kind of spiritual proselytism, marketing and economy count amongst the fields of action of images, heavily mobilized to push us to believe in them.

The disillusionment can be bitter. Despite our hopes, miracles don't exist. The image may turn out to be a chimera, which above all reveals our crazy attraction towards illusion and lie. Paradise is pixelised.