Ottavio Marino, La Compassione

In some southern Italian countries during the Holy Week, the week before Easter, there are rituals and traditions that have been repeated for centuries and which recall the gestures of Christ’s passion. I followed trying to photographically document one of these rites in a small city in southern Italy. The Good Friday ritual is a ritual very much felt by the population of these places and has been repeated for hundreds of years in the same way. It is a ritual in which the sacred often joins the pagan too, creating a sort of powerful suggestion made up of faces, sounds, gestures that fascinate and intrigue, leading to certain important reflections on faith. There are several figures that participate in these religious rites among these the most striking are those of “flagellants”. The flagellants are people who ask for a grace or that this grace has received. Throughout the duration of the Good Friday procession, with the face covered, they accompany the statue of the dead Christ, also physically joining the pain of Jesus and his mother, the virgin Mary. I followed this rite to show what faith can sometimes be, without any judgment on my part but as a silent witness of a fact that goes beyond religion and which arouses in so many that feeling called compassion.