Palermo (Sicily), July 2010, time of the religious festival dedicated to the patron saint of the city: Santa Rosalia (“u fistinu”). A careful tour around the most significant neighborhoods reveals the great faith and the strong devotion of the people towards the patron saint. Improvised altars of saints, candles, flowers appear everywhere, in the most unlikely places, and silently live together with the daily events of the Palermitans, blending within and “disappearing” in the background of this wonderful theater of life, full of loud sounds, smells and tastes that arouse strong emotions.
As a Sicilian, I know myself how faith conditions any aspect of our lives; “The Sacred and the Profane”, in fact, tries to communicate, through the metaphor of of images, how the historical roots and traditions are so far in time that today we can see a curious and sometime grotesque mix of worship objects and symbols with everyday life.
Biography
Marco Ristuccia is an Italian photographer and IT engineer, born in Syracuse (Italy) in 1971. He worked for over 10 years as technical consultant in Hewlett Packard Corporation. Now he operates as a freelance photographer and consultant. The technical background provided him with a particular inclination towards deep conceptual analysis and strong formal balance.
Beside commercial work, his personal projects cover reportage, urban and natural landscape and fine-art photography. He is seldom interested in photographing people, focusing instead on the consequences and traces of human life.
