MADONNA DELLE CASE

Tokyo International Photo Award – 3rd place Winner

Fabio Mantovani proposes the unpublished photograph series “Madonna of houses”: this work was created in summer, among olive trees and prickly pears, in the blue
of sky and sea, often scratched by the flight of bitterns or canaries of Salento. The Country from which this project began is not even five thousand souls.Here there
was the meeting with the people and places that hold a particular Madonna: every night She turns tirelessly from house to house.This history is made of oppositions
and reveals, a resurgence of ancient Faith.The temples are inhabited by conditioners and Teddy bears, rifles and plasma TVs, marbles and nylon; in the kitchen the
Marseille fragrance merges with tomato smell; and even lace and cut flowers in vases, the silhouette of Padre Pio and the memory of the children on the snow, in the
picture on the wall.The Madonna is there: She is caged in her asphyxiated casket, despite the clouds at her feet, and the crescent moon, and the stars in the coat, and
garments inflated from the heaven. In the little town of Salve She has been doing her continuous pilgrimage since seventy years. She is venerated, She is feared, She
is loved, like in all superstitions.This community lives in the rite; the community swarms, carries, doesn’t stop, even during shooting: we can read all the urgency of the
looks, made of flesh, so different from Her High Fixity.