“In this book, I have tried to collect the last traces of tradition and mourning in Sicily, recreating the human and cultural imagination that, for centuries, has been the glue among Sicilian communities: an “immaterial” heritage, an expression of historical memory that needs to be exalted, rather than removed. I wanted to challenge one of the biggest taboos of contemporary culture, and the more I delved into the research and work, the more I convinced myself that putting a veil on death and its practices would be like putting a veil on life. I realised this while searching for subjects: photography itself is death, the crystallized instant of a thing, a gesture, an intention that will never be again. But it is also eternal life, memory, because it delivers to the future an image that can no longer be lost.”
(Armando Rotoletti)

“It’s time to celebrate Death, its power, its looming presence.But those with faith do not fear the end because waiting for them is the eternal life they were promised. There is God’s love that transcends, overcomes and conquers all. He is waiting. But what if, suddenly, He revealed himself to be a ghost, an absence or emptiness?
The Lord is my shepherd: I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters. Love and death, apparently extreme opposites, are in Rotoletti’s photographs bound by blood and a common fate.”
(Dacia Maraini)

“The cult of the dead, the communion with spirits, the ancient knowledge that community is the combination of both the living and the dead, are immanent and as terrifying as they are benevolent, yet necessary to existence within time and its cyclical recreation of itself in the weaves of rituality. These make up the imaginative but tangible framework in which to set the dense, thoughtful and refined pictures of Armando Rotoletti”
(Ignazio Buttitta)

Armando Rotoletti
Texts by Dacia Maraini and Ignazio Buttitta
Printed by EBS. Format 31,7×25,6 cm. 120 Pages. 56 Photographs. Cardboard cover, canvas back.
Printed on 170 gram Gardapat Kiara coated paper. Binding in twelfths sewn thread.
Price: € 50,00 (+40€ shipping cost outside Italy)
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