"Don't exchange a sign of peace", the pandemic as seen in the churches

After the portrayal of the silence and absence of Italian schools at the time of distance learning, Luca Giorietto has returned to explore the effects and consequences of the health emergency on the symbolic places of aggregation and encounter with others. This time the photographer focused on churches, and in particular on the gestures and rituals that have been disrupted by social distancing and isolation. Giorietto described his latest project in this way: 

2020, which ended a few months ago, continues to extend its spectrum by invading our daily lives and among the various meeting spaces, sacred places are among those that have remained accessible to the public in compliance with anti-Covid regulations. This visual cut-up is set inside the churches of Rome and its province. Despite the non-closure, the atmosphere that pervades is metaphysical among the silhouettes of sanitizers, crosses, sculptures and paintings, distancing signs, the smell of incense, flowers and stigmata. Masses and prayers continue in the presence but everything has changed. The color of the shots, however, remains vivid in memory of the past freedom and waiting for a future rebirth.

Giorietto takes us on a journey inside the sacred places where everything seems to have remained as before, but where exchanging a sign of peace, once part of secular daily life, now appears a subversive, deeply nostalgic gesture.