ANOTHER KIND OF SPIRITUALITY

LORENZO VITALI

// Lorenzo is a photographer based in Milan, Italy. Creative and experimental, he is always attentive to new artistic opportunities in his environment. Lorenzo finds his own kind of spirituality in sacred building architecture, especially in the light situations such grand buildings create. He photographed a series in black and white to emphasize the dramatic moods he encountered in many such buildings.

“I develop the aesthetic sense of my works by combining classic elements and innovation. I pay particular attention to shapes and materiality. I frame my work by myself in a conceptual discourse with a marked tendency towards formal research,” he says.

He uses a mirrorless camera (Canon EOS R5) with various L series lenses, shooting in raw. Lorenzo´s work has been published in various magazines and has received awards and honorable mentions in various competitions.

“You don’t just take a photograph with a camera. You put in the photograph all the images you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, and the people you have loved. ”

Ansel Adams

What draws you to the arts?

“I think my interest in expressionist painting goes very well with what I wanted to express.”

What do you like about your “spiritual” photo series?

“I really enjoyed expressing my spiritual vision of these places with black and white, which differs from the usual approach to these places of worship.”

Le Corbusier said: “Architecture is the skilful play of volumes under the light”.

Every built work, in its existence, tends in fact to have conscious or unconscious relationships with light, which is therefore, even in its absence, an element of every architectural work.

Regarding the architecture of the sacred places of Christianity, regardless of the historical period, Lorenzo has always had the feeling that the management of light (and therefore of shadows) has been wisely modulated in order to create atmospheres that are highly impacting on the human soul.

“Even the volumes, often enormous, the majesty and, frequently, the magnificence of the structures initially generate a feeling of “disorientation”: one can feel lost and small in large multidimensional spaces, sometimes even oppressed,” he adds. “If in the believer the brightness that descends from above, the height of the aisles with the translucent walls of polychrome windows, the altar placed in the East suggest religious spirituality, a desire to rise, in me as an atheist all this generates at first almost a sense of alarm, which pushes me to seek “refuge” in the shade in whose cool stillness another world opens up to my eyes. I begin to calmly observe those details of which in a first overview I had not become visually aware. And it is in the observation of these forms, modeled by light and shadows, in which artistic references, curious expressions of religiosity or more generally compositions dictated by the light-matter interaction are often present, and in which my gaze gets lost. Here I reach an inner peace nourished by a form of spirituality that could be defined as “atheist” in which in the end I find the humanity that expands in time and space into a sort of infinity. This spirituality is for me an “open space”, without churches and without dogmas imposed by an ecclesia.”

Lorenzo used black and white photography to give more drama to the subjects. The images come from Catholic sacred buildings located throughout Europe, but especially in Italy, France and Spain.

Click on the photos to see the full image with their title.