Marco Ristuccia – The Sacred and the Profane
Palermo (Sicily), July 2010, time of the religious festival dedicated to the patron saint of the city: Santa Rosalia (“u fistinu”). A careful tour around the most significant neighborhoods reveals the great faith and the strong devotion of the people towards the patron saint. Improvised altars of saints, candles, flowers appear everywhere, in the most unlikely places, and silently live together with the daily events of the Palermitans, blending within and “disappearing” in the background of this wonderful theater of life, full of loud sounds, smells and tastes that arouse strong emotions. As a Sicilian, I know myself how faith conditions any aspect of our lives; “The Sacred and the Profane”, in fact, tries to communicate, through the metaphor of images, how the historical roots and traditions are so far in time that today we can see a curious and sometime grotesque mix of worship objects and symbols with everyday life.
More images and other interesting projects on Marco Ristuccia’s website.
Marco Ristuccia was born in Syracuse (Italy) in 1971. He took the first photos with his father’s camera, immediately falling in love with this powerful means of communication. In 1989 he moved to Turin to attend the Polytechnic Institute and receive a Master Degree in Computer Engineering. In 2009 he decided to pursue the photographic career, capitalizing also the technical background which provides him with a particular inclination towards deep conceptual analysis and strong formal balance.
Beside commercial work his personal projects cover reportage, urban and natural landscape and art photography. He is seldom interested in photographing people as main subject, preferring instead a rather neutral approach, or an indirect one, focusing on consequences and traces of human life.
Since February 2012 he collaborates as an editor with the photography magazine Urbanautica, for which he also conducts international photographic interviews.