There’s the fleece-wearing and the anorak-wearing brigades. I can’t pretend that everyone at these sites looks like they’ve walked out of a different era. It’s not that the project has converted me, but I did feel a deep sense of spiritual presence, a sense of the unknown, an otherworldliness. Photographing these people was a way of depicting how I felt. Lourdes was one of three pilgrimage sites I photographed for this project, Ex-Voto (the other two being Ballyvourney in Ireland and Grabarka in Poland), and the longer I spent in them all, the more I realised it’s not just about the pilgrims, but their experience of being in the natural environment and what nature offers in terms of faith. Even if you don’t share the religious beliefs, you can feel quite immersed in it all. It’s a very atmospheric place with bells and Ave Marias and beautiful singing. Sometimes I would be out all day and not take a single image. I would often observe people sitting for hours by the river, thinking and praying. This slow, meditative process mirrored the meditative aspect of the pilgrimage. Markus blinked the first time, so I had to do a second one. I also can’t do lots, because the film is so expensive. It takes a good half an hour to get a shot. The connection I felt to the sitters was also down to the way that specific camera works. He was very young – early to mid 20s – but came across as a wise soul, much older than his years. He had been paired up for the week with an older Austrian man who was in a wheelchair, and I gathered they had formed a close bond, as often happens during the pilgrimage. The water plays such an important part in the healing stories. I chose a location across from the famous baths on the river Gave de Pau. We arranged to photograph him the next day. He was chatty but slightly set apart from the raucous drinking crowd. We ended up at a party, drinking with all the youth of the Order of Malta in a function room in the Hotel Solitude. For the volunteers, going on the pilgrimage is the big social event in the calendar: it’s a great week hanging out with other young volunteers from all over the world. And I realised it was what I should have been doing all along.Ī friend who is fluent in French, Italian and Spanish helped me to approach people. I went back one last time, with my old plate camera, deciding to try more formal portraiture in black and white. I started working in colour, but it felt too documentary, like a travel feature for a magazine. I spent the next three years going back and forth. They take their responsibilities very seriously: they’re on strict schedules, getting them ready, bathing them. They act as chaperones and carers for the pilgrims they’re paired with – often, they’ve accompanied the same person several years in a row. I chose instead to focus on the helpers.Ī lot of the young people who volunteer with the order are professionals - doctors, lawyers.
I photographed some pilgrims, but none with very visible illnesses.
The site is known for its healing powers, and the sick are very much revered in Lourdes. I was deeply moved by the emphasis on healing and the relationship people had with nature. What I sought out though were quieter, calmer moments. It all felt as if it were from a different time. I had timed my visit to coincide with the Order of Malta’s annual international pilgrimage, and it was like stepping on to a film set: women sweeping through the streets in long, black cloaks emblazoned with the order’s insignia the men in military-looking boilersuits, pushing sick people around in chariots. It’s a bit like a Disneyland of faith, crass and commercial, with thousands and thousands of pilgrims and tourists and trinket shops. Lourdes is overwhelming when you first arrive.
Five years ago, after seeing Jessica Hausner’s 2009 film Lourdes, I booked myself on a pilgrim package tour to the south of France. I ’m not religious, but I am very curious about people who are and their motivations.
0 kommentar(er)
