Umberto Verdoliva: Ah-MEN | MONOVISIONS - Black & White Photography Magazine

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2025

Ah-MEN is the title of a project born from the idea of focusing on a real and definable starting point (and constant reference) for an entire photographic path – to find those situations and circumstances that keep repeating themselves.
A catholic church, the place of choice, is not just seen as a religious building and/or a sacred place, but especially in its dimension of popolo di Dio (God’s people), of people who identify in a common, shared belief.
My personal reflection on a religious reality, such as Catholicism, started from observation of those symbols, those rituals, gestures and millenial habits representing at the same time both the sacral dimension and, involuntarily, the profane one.
I felt a sense of both sacred and profane mixing with humanity in an everyday life made up by waiting, questions, desolation, suffering, hopes, sharing, joy and entrustment.
The presented pictures are the epilogue of a long path in which the individual will later emerge in all his dimension of “homo religiosus”: an individual whose subjectivity is deeply embedded into the structure of his conscience.
And so the church becomes not just a place for the soul and for meeting with God, but also a place where humanity is experimented in its most fragile and extraordinary essence.

Websites:
www.umbertoverdoliva.it
www.flickr.com/photos/umbertoverdoliva
www.spontanea.org
www.street-photographers.com