Around Angelus

Around the streets of the Angelus, adults and children let themselves be seduced by the Poetry of Everyday Life.

The strangest things happen around the streets of Angelus. Men and women, young and old, of all ethnic groups and ages, all hurry to reach the place where the religious event – the Noon Angelus – will take place, in thanksgiving for the mystery of the Incarnation. 

There is no better time to remember that you are a Christian. Every person, whether they are a tourist who passed there by chance or an enthusiastic believer, gets carried away by the sounds and sensations of the atmosphere.

The energy is palpable. It fills the air and intoxicates passers-by, making them more docile and more meek. The light is warm, enveloping. Everything seems to be perfect, created ad hoc for the occasion. It is a day of celebration and, regardless of one’s knowledge of religions and local customs, the most important moment is not the event itself but rather what happens around it, the instants that precede it and define it in that unique atmosphere.

This is why, in homage to childhood memories, I returned to the same streets I walked with my family years before to visit St. Peter’s Square and listen to the Angelus, the Catholic prayer that devotees recite every Sunday in thanksgiving for the mystery of the incarnation.

The series, entitled ‘The Poetry of Everyday Life’, evokes an alien dimension found within a bubble, a protected and alternative environment in which everything, even the most banal, takes on a different connotation from normal. The faces of the subjects framed on the streets of the Angelus express the serenity that accompanies the Angelus, ad sometimes the extravagant representation of it all as well.

In this feast for the eyes, people move excitedly in a preserved space that becomes a small oasis within the chaos of the city. The camera goes unnoticed, because there, in that idyllic dimension, everything seems to be allowed. Screams and noises are the background to a potpourri of visual experiences, moments ready to be captured and told.

Around Angelus evokes the sensations of a special day, the memory of a magical and timeless atmosphere. Fragments of a past and future in which the protagonists, far from being contemporary citizens or time travelers, are the main actors of this eternal story: a continuous seduction, which tastes like a story and a spiritual journey to which no one, not even the strongest, can resist. Around the streets of the Angelus, adults and children let themselves be seduced by the poetry of everyday life.