Jackie Nickerson gained access to religious institutions across the country over a three-year period, from the monks of Glenstal Abbey to various enclosed orders of nuns to a solitary Tridentine nun living in a hermitage in Mayo.

The photographs in the 'Faith' exhibition range from portraits of priests and nuns to abstract subjects such as an image of the leftover paper-thin bread of the Eucharist, after the host has been cut out, lying in a bin.

"I am very interested in the way the Catholic faith has been so important in developing the social structure of Ireland, " Nickerson told the Sunday Tribune.

"So I wanted to explore that by looking at what exactly makes the ordinary average person want to devote their life to the faith. There has been so much negative press surrounding the church in relation to child abuse, so I felt it was important to look at the simple things that make up the church in such a period of change."

A commercial photographer for the last 25 years, US-born Nickerson has worked for theNew York Times, Interview magazine, Marie Claire, Elle andW, and has been living here for the past five years.

Her last body of work, entitled 'Farm', was based on three years travelling around southern Africa photographing labourers and was displayed in a top New York gallery.

'Faith' will be Nickerson's first solo show in Ireland and will run in the Paul Kane Gallery at Dublin's Merrion Square from 15 September to 7 October.

Looking back on her three years of photographing religious orders here, Nickerson said it was "a very emotional and difficult process to bring it all together".

"The most important memory will be the fact that I was allowed into places like the Poor Clare and Carmelite orders' convents that no one else will ever see inside, " she said. "The trust they gave me really took me in and that will stay with me forever, as it gave me huge encouragement that there are still people like that out there. I am not a Catholic, but there was something shining out of those nuns that the world has to see. I think I have found something of huge significance in Irish life."