Prayer

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project © Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project © Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project View all images ↓
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Prayer is an investigation into otherworldly emotions.

This body of work is a universal story and was born out of a need to explore my experience of the past few years.

In 2018 my son was diagnosed as deaf. From England I had moved back to Italy, where Louis and I spent a year in complete poverty. The days passed slowly, in silence. I began to look at myself and the world with different eyes. Light, silence, suspension, connection were the waves of recall. I began to wonder why humankind had lost all forms of deep listening, stillness, observation, with the world around us, with sensations, with primal instinct. I too had lost it and was trying to find it again. Images, only images could make me cry so hard that my heart exploded.

I had, thus, the need and urgency to find a new language of communication.

Photography was the path I had to follow.

Never before has humanity been traversed by a strong desire to reconnect with a spiritual imagery that, however, fades in the speed of contemporary life. As a photographer, I research and want to bring up the strong unconscious emotions in the everyday, the ones we tend not to listen to, to avoid, and photograph them from different points, with different sounds, in different lights.

What is that moment where the human being feels emotions: strong, tearing, immeasurable, sometimes considered excessive? Can I stay in what is fear, sadness, love? Yes I can and I can photograph it from different points of view. There will be one gaze that sees only down and another that points straight up to the sky. I will see fragments of cold skin, peat roofs, some tangles of brambles. The light will be the blinding light of noon and the gray light of fog. I will hear deep sounds of a primitive gong and a high-pitched, decibel-busting sound.

I want to shake the torpor of contemporary man and represent the deeper side of each of us.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

This is a boar skull, found at the dog shelter. I have always found it beautiful and elegant. Talking about prayer is perhaps also talking about death. The boar skull laughs and observes. Where will the soul of that animal be, perhaps, it has already regained ground in another body. I saw myself in this death. I wonder if the boar was able to run until he ran out of breath in his lungs and died of a heart attack. Maybe the dogs attacked him. Would I have been able to survive? I can feel the dogs breathing down my neck. Sometimes I wish I was a free animal, out of time. The boar laughs and knows it.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

Photographing in other viewpoints. Photographing from below. what a small, tiny being, an animal sees, what we see when we walk with our heads down. I decided to try for a month to photograph only from below in order to understand the relationship between the very strong emotions one can have in very intense situations and not being able to look beyond them.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

I think our life is like this wonderful intertwining of branches. You can choose one path or the other. We don't remember the path we set out to follow but maybe some of us know that we are here to have certain experiences and take the right branch passing through huge bramble bushes first though.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

In the Oma Forest, the trees are all colored. They speak. It takes an attentive ear to hear their secrets. They speak of animals and free men, of a time that time no longer is. Fertile land to till, prayers for sun, for good harvest, prayers for rain, for wind that blows and dries. And in the end each of us will be etched in stone, our story will serve as an example to future generations. We need to be aware of that.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

I met Falco on a winter day at Baratti Sea and asked him if I could portray him for an assignment related to Diane Arbus. Months later he moved in front of my house. We became friends. Falco is a shaman, a disciple of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Attracted to him, I wrote to if and when it was possible to meet. I yearned to photograph him in an intimate, prayerful moment. So he agreed. Together we immersed ourselves in a danced meditation. Almost in a trance, I began a series of slow shots. This portrait is surrender to the Earth, surrender to existence, and he, Falco, lets it flow. In the commotion our souls recognized each other.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

That day I was looking for details, to be entwined and streaked. What would it have been like to walk through masses of lianas, to find myself in front of them and get entangled in them? How would I have untangled myself, if I had had the patience to think about finding the thread that would free me. I asked Catherine if she could accompany me on a trip to the sea. I wanted to evoke the carefreeness of youth and the depth and confusion of adolescence. Caterina has very long hair. I portrayed her floating at the water's edge almost in ecstasy, but I didn't choose that picture because it's a picture I've seen before. I wanted her to go further and start screaming with all the energy she had. Exhausted, she cried, cried with joy, she told me. She fell down, drank the salt water and as soon as she got up I knew that was the moment I wanted to portray her.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

I was the English teacher of Martina, daughter of Cristina, granddaughter of Elsa. I waited for the sunset and asked all three of them if they could sit at the table and join hands, as in a magic ritual. We waited a long time for the light to have its direct beam on Martina's face. I asked the little girl to look into my eyes. I told her: you know something we don't know. We are made of the cells of our ancestors and we carry a part of them with us. The picture speaks of the unspoken rituals that hide us behind blood ties. Martina is the one who has the energies of both women; she is in charge of the family lineage.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

One evening I entered Louis' room and saw that he was having fun playing with the flashlight and the shadows reflected on the wall. Slow and observant he watched that moon on the wall get bigger and smaller. Together we touched and explored it. The bubbles on the wall reminded me of its craters. I remembered that as a child I wanted to be an astronaut.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

That afternoon Louis Ottavio was beaten at school. When I saw the scar, the sunset light was illuminating his back drawing almost a hand of Fatima. The hand of Fatima is a universal protection of power, might and strength. They were given to Louis that day.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

I cannot reveal her name. Days before, meeting her for coffee, I proposed that we meet for photos. In a hotel room I asked if she would be comfortable being naked. She had no problem with that. She had wigs, a glass of whiskey and cigarettes with her. She told me that she sleeps as she happens, with her body all disheveled. If she thinks she cries, she can't be silent, she can't be still. Looking at her I felt responsible to portray her in a moment dedicated to her. Calm, silence, sometimes a vilely deep breath. She seems to be waiting for someone to take her away from there.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

With Simona and Kristina we went at Villa Pamphili in Rome. I wanted to take a photo that had contact, close contact. I asked Simona to hold Kristina, not let her go, keep her on her side, and dip her fingers in her flesh. Anger and sensuality. I asked Kristina to look at me like she was discovered and almost liked it or she couldn't wait for it to happen. The hand of Kristina is lightly rested on Simona's shoulder and Simona seems to whisper something to her. What do people feel when they're getting a secret? The shadows on their faces are the secrets they will never tell anyone. Secrets kept safe, pampered and nourished with dreams and memories.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

I am in the bathroom, I put my camera on the tripod poised over a closet. I have the torchlight shining on my fear of growing old or my pride in becoming an adult. The wrinkles on my forehead and the bags under my eyes are the marks of a mother, of a wife, they are my hallmarks, they are mine. the scar I wear on my left eye is more than thirty-five years old. I look at what was and what will be. Maybe for a brief moment I remember what I am doing here

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

I asked my son Louis Ottavio if he felt like sharing one of his quiet, restful moments with me. We played for a while, but it was a very hot afternoon. Tired, we settled down on the sofa. I watched Louis observe the still air, the silence of the sunny street. How can I look with your eyes, what do you see and what do you imagine? I remembered when as a child I never slept and in the early afternoon I went out, there was no one in the street. Where everybody is. Every summer I have that memory. The cities are deserted, ghost towns. This picture evokes fantasy to me and being able to see with every child's eyes.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

Migni has been with me for 12 years and I always thought she was my reincarnated grandmother. Mystery. After reading Paul Auster's Timbuktu I think I changed my type of listening toward Migni and Billy. What does Migni feel on a hot day of May? I think what I can't understand, perhaps through too much stupidity, or lack of attention, the camera captures it and can help me in this process of searching and understanding. This photo represents our going beyond normal communication, it is time for us to open up to speak without words. Too much energy is consumed in the Babylon of incomprehensible and vain sounds. I need silence and I need to learn a language of vision, energy and instinct.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

Tiziana is a photographer from Pisa. We talked for a long time that morning, and we hugged. She told me that all her life it was easy for her to stay on the surface. She was interested in telling the lives of others ironically. He never wanted to go deep in his life, in his intimate emotions, in his fears. Together we walked in the garden of a castle. I asked her if she wanted to lean on the wall and listen. Listen to the silence around her. Listen to those bricks so old, maybe medieval. Her eyes tell her that something she heard and that something made her turn. The beam of light that illuminates her head may be the sign of an awakening.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

Oxararfoss Waterfall It was the first time I had seen a waterfall of this magnificent power. I was moved. The roar of the water made me think of the energy wave of soul redemption. I wanted to represent a deafening and powerful noise. Something gigantic sucking in, dragging away, overwhelming and leaving no escape. I felt so small and powerless in the face of this magnificence.

© Sara Sepulcri - Image from the Prayer photography project
i

For an assignment I had to break the stereotype of the Christmas tree. I found one in front of a Chinese emporium ready to be thrown away. I forcefully dragged it home, climbed the stairs, and looked at it. What do you represent to me? I erased Trent Park's "The Christmas Tree Bucket" from my mind. That is his Christmas not mine. I stood looking at the tree for hours. I thought about time, how long do we stay with the Christmas tree after we've decorated it, and do we remember to put it away or do we leave it in a corner until next Christmas? I started hanging bathing suits over the tree, bicycle helmets, shoes, slippers. Everything was too constructed and didn't work. Exhausted from thinking I took a broom and hit the tree so many times that fir needles decorated the house. In the end this tree is me, it is us, free of all anger and resentment. Spiky, dry, drooping, ready to be reborn.

Prayer by Sara Sepulcri

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