Campus Stellae

The Camino de Santiago is a set of ancient pilgrimage routes beginning at various points in western Europe and ending in the north-western Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela, where according to legend, the remains of Saint James’ body lie.

While the Camino has traditionally been walked by men, today women make up over half of all pilgrims. Their experience is different, not least because of the small but ever-present safety concerns that they face when walking alone – as recently as 2015 a woman was murdered while on the Camino. Women pilgrims have developed ways of mitigating these risks through online forums, social media groups and blogs where they can offer advice to each other and create walking groups.

In the summer of 2021, pandemic-related restrictions are beginning to ease, and (women) pilgrims are coming back in search of personal and spiritual growth. Some of them have been walking for over a month, some of them have come alone. For many, the decision to do the Camino is directly related to losses suffered during the pandemic. One of the women I met had lost her job, and another had lost a family member. This project aims to explore why so many women are drawn to the Camino and what their experience of completing it is like.

The title Campus Stellae means ‘field of stars’ in Latin, which is believed by some to be the etymological root of the name ‘Compostela’. The project has a personal significance because although Santiago de Compostela is my hometown, I have not lived there since the age of 14. I therefore feel an intense sense of simultaneous connection and alienation to the city which I believe comparable to the complex emotions felt by pilgrims throughout their journey, and particularly when they reach Santiago.

Going forward I plan to document more women and to expand my documentation towards parts of their journey, perhaps participating in portions of their walk. Moreover, I plan to experiment with more creative portrait photography techniques, including double exposures, to represent the complicated emotional relationships between pilgrims and the spaces that make up the Camino de Santiago. An example is included in the submitted images.