True Faith

For more than a decade, Italian photographer Ezio d’Agostino has been exploring the documentary nature of photography. 

He is particularly interested in the medium’s ability to bear witness to social phenomena that he has experienced throughout his personal history. After 14,644, a work inspired by the discovery of the last photograph of a loved one who had decided to withdraw from society, True Faith reflects on his memory of visiting the site where the face of Christ appeared on an olive tree in 1987. 

This project, launched in 2014, is an opportunity to return to his homeland, since Italy accounts for two-thirds of the world’s religious apparitions. Most depict the face of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Padre Pio (1887–1968), an Italian monk who has been very popular for the past fifty years or so. These phenomena often have an impact on the local community, ranging from divisions between skeptics and believers to the creation of pilgrimage sites that transform public or private spaces. 

Ezio d’Agostino first conducted an in-depth investigation in various archives to map out religious apparitions and assess the role of the photograph in this body of documentation. He then visited the sites in question, accompanied by socio-anthropologist Hélène Jeanmougin, to collect oral testimonies from residents and photograph the various sites. 

The descriptive qualities of the photographs—through their composition and precision—reflect the photographer’s attempts to capture this phenomenon, which is invisible to his eyes. He nevertheless maintains a certain distance from the subject in order to produce an image accessible to individual experience. While the collection as a whole resembles a series of views of commonplace places, its subject comes vividly to life when read alongside the accompanying testimonies. Presented on the transparent medium of Ektachrome, these images succeed in conveying the elusive nature of this collective imagination. 

↘︎ Curating: Anne Lacoste, director of the Institut pour la photographie

↘︎ Production: Institut pour la photographie

↘︎ Ezio d’Agostino is one of the recipients of the Research and Creative Work Support Program second edition, "Photography and the Visual Culture of the Imagination" in 2019–2020

↘︎ This project received support from the CNAP for documentary photography in 2016