This project aims to shows, in the era of global communication, the life and work of people who have chosen silence, detachment from the world, isolation from the noise of cities and from the virtual noise of social media.
A choice that today, in an almost completely secularized society, may seem counter-current. “SECLUSION” is a project that required a long preparation, a journey in 3 Italian monasteries in which it is very difficult to enter, especially with a camera.
The reportage “SECLUSION”, was produced between 2007 and 2011 and documents, the daily life of the Carthusians of the Carthusian monastery of Serra San Bruno in Calabria, the Poor Clares of the Convent of St. Clare in Rome and the nuns of the monastery of St. Benedict in Catania.
The nuns are photographed while they are working in the garden, in the kitchen, or while they are looking after the hens, but also in physical activity. Even the monks of St Bruno are photographed in their daily tasks, for exemple driving a mower. But it is above all contemplation that radiates all the activities of the nuns and monks, even the simplest and most banal. Many hours of the day are dedicated to prayer, both in the form of individual meditation and that of common sharing.
The two aspects of contemplation (personal and shared) are effectively captured in the section dedicated to the monks of San Bruno, portrayed in the community celebration as well as in the solitary one within the cell walls.
The purpose of this report is to make the silence full of emotions of a different life visible. Where I could imagine a condition of life “forced”, I discovered the feeling of freedom that animates these existences; from the faces of these men and women, “seduced” by the divine, shines the quiet of the soul. Monastic life, often judged as an escape from reality, reveals instead connotations of profound and human reality, leading to what men, more than anything else, flee: contact with themselves.
