MICHELE BRESSAN
PORTFOLIO
PILGRIMAGES
I was born in Italy from an Italian father and a Romanian mother. My parents decided to send me to a kindergarten run by catholic nuns; they sent me there most probably as some sort of tribute for not being believers, religious persons. If the first part of my life was built around a catholic imagery and education (I have also attended a religious primary school there), when I moved to Bucharest at the beginning of the ‘90’s, the orthodox reality and customs added to my previous experience. Since then, I have been drawn to how certain people are able to devote themselves entirely to the faith, regardless of its origins.
Isn’t religion the biggest mythology? Even if religion and mythology differ in purpose, they have very overlapping aspects; both of them are very important and present to certain communities. We can consider mythology as a collection of myths: myths dealing with the gods, demigods or legendary heroes. I’m talking about an allegorical narrative for sure, but one that holds the world together, especially in certain contexts. It could be a miraculous painting: a portrait of the Virgin Mary crying holy tears capable to heal the incurables. It could be a tree, apparently shaped like Jesus’s face; or it could be just a perimeter, a forest, one considered holy and capable of producing miracles of any kind. All these situations brought people together since hundreds of years ago, and they still do so in the 21st century.
In 2013 I decided to follow and document these situations. I started participating in pilgrimages, visiting some of them for several years in a row, trying to adapt without being an intruder. I would be lying if I said that my main goal was just to take great pictures and boost my career with them. My approach became very personal, I was trying to almost forget about my camera, testing the authenticity of my presence there by partaking as a pilgrim, and by slowly becoming one of them. The first pilgrimage I attended was the one dedicated to Saint Dumitru, an event located in the centre of Bucharest. In that occasion I wasn’t able to photograph; I felt that I was there just as a picker, one that would satisfy his needs and quickly go home with his catch. Usually, that would be a normal approach for a reportage, but my intention was more likely rooted to be part of the phenomena that I was recording. I wasn’t looking for a reportage, but for a situational study related to both my personal experience and new customs, traditions, symbols, gestures and myths. While near Cluj, attending the Saint Nicula pilgrimage somewhere on a remote hill area near the city, I had some sort of revelation. A lady asked me if I was willing to take a picture of her; as I was still shy about photographing those people in that situation of public intimacy, I was more than happy to follow her request. After I took her portrait, I asked for an address where I could send the pictures. She told me she didn’t need the pictures, stating that ‘’for her the most important was to know that she was photographed while been there’’. Since then, I started to work on another frequency, a fluid one, which made me enter the core of each situation I encountered. What is common to all the various typologies and personal histories one can find in pilgrimages is endurance, dedication, hope and serenity.
The pilgrimage context offers a continuous confrontation to both myths and the human capacity to follow and obey them. At the Saint Nicula pilgrimage site, at around 3am a miraculous icon is brought out of the church and walked among the pilgrims; hundreds of people kneel around the church and the atmosphere is strange: here and there very positive, almost enlightening, but in the same time dark, heavy. Most of the times documentary photography lacks concept; its main target is to record something happening, to ‘’be there&then’’. That has become my main concept, to be there. Another major religious event is the Saint Parascheva pilgrimage, happening in the heart of Iasi, the second biggest Romanian city, located near the Moldavian border. Like the one dedicated to Saint Dumitru, the Iasi one is an urban pilgrimage, capable to freeze the city for three days, considering that thousands of pilgrims reach the city from all over the country.
Many of the photographs I took were related to a story, one that those photographed were willing to tell. I listened to many dramatic stories , I chatted with hundreds of people mostly about their lives, often in intimate terms. Each one of them was willing to tell a story and to be pictured in a photograph: a record of their presence there. The project turned into a personal and intimate journey, one in which I managed to answer certain questions but also to stumble upon new ones. In 2019 I ended the pilgrimages; I felt in a loop, aware that I had reached some sort of saturation, both as personal experience and photographic approach. Photography cannot confirm or deny a mythology, but is able to record its effects.