168 pages in four languages on Holy Week rites in Italy, Spain and Portugal. Graphic design by Gaetano Armenio, Editrice L'Immagine, 2025

In the Jubilee year, I recounted a single Holy Week across five towns and three countries. Molfetta in Italy, Braga in Portugal, Bercianos de Aliste, Medina de Rioseco and Peñafiel in Spain. Rites different in language and form, the same ancient gesture underneath.

It is a 168-page colour volume, bilingual Italian and English, documenting the travelling photographic exhibition PER CRUCEM AD LUCEM, presented in Rome at the Church of Sant'Antonio dei Portoghesi and in Molfetta at the Sala dei Templari, between March and April 2025. It gathers over a hundred large-format photographs of the processional rites of the five towns.

I organised the volume by town. Each section presents the photographs of the local rites with the historical and artistic profiles that place each territory's traditions in context, and the itineraries for going to see them in person, in the five towns at the heart of the exhibition. I kept the whole work in my own hands, the editorial project, the selection of the photographs, the graphic design and the layout, and I wrote one of the critical texts. Printing is by Editrice L'Immagine.

Lining up five Holy Weeks from three different countries served to show something you cannot grasp from inside a single town. The suffering and the light of the title, per crucem ad lucem, do not belong to one country alone. They change accent from Molfetta to Braga to Peñafiel, but they all tell the same night.

180 bilingual pages on Apulia's emotional routes, across 14 towns and 15 food producers. Graphic design and photography by Gaetano Armenio, 2021.

In 2023 I prepared the second edition, and you only make a second edition when the first was good for something. The 2021 guide had found readers, the towns had used it, the producers had recognised themselves in it. So I updated it, took out what had not worked, added what was missing.

It is the official publication of PUGLIAUTENTICA.IT in an updated edition, a pocket colour guide of 140 pages, bilingual Italian and English, telling the Apulia of traditions, rites and food and wine to an Italian and international audience. Inside are thematic itineraries from Gargano to Salento, built around 14 towns and 15 food and farming producers.

I organised it by emotional itineraries, the Easter rites, the patron saint festivals, the food and wine routes, each with its own maps and practical directions. The real novelty is the "Meet the Maker" profiles, which introduce the local producers with a direct link to the shop on the www.pugliautentica.it portal, where typical products are bought from the people who make them. Not a company name on a list, the face of the person who works there. Editorial project, text, graphic design and layout, from the first line to the last page it is all mine.

A guide that reaches a second edition is no longer a gamble. It is a tool that has shown it works. Updating it means listening to those who used it the first time and correcting, not repeating. The Apulia you have never seen, by the second edition, I knew better myself too.

Shut indoors like everyone else, I had an idea that seemed out of step at the time. To make people want Apulia precisely when no one could move. Travel was frozen, the processions cancelled, the festivals closed. And I set about building a guide to bring people to Apulia, the moment it became possible again.

The result was the first official publication of PUGLIAUTENTICA.IT, a pocket colour guide of 180 pages, bilingual Italian and English, released in 2021. Inside are the emotional routes from Gargano to Salento, built around 14 towns and 15 food and farming producers.

I organised everything by theme, the Easter rites, the patron saint festivals, the paths among rock-hewn hermitages and pilgrim ways, the wine and food tours in cellars and oil mills. Each route is meant for those looking for Apulia off the mass circuits, not the crowded beach but the hermitage, not the tourist restaurant but the oil mill. The guide connects to the portal's e-commerce, where extra virgin olive oil, wine, preserves and traditional sweets are bought directly from the producers. Editorial project, text, graphic design and layout I carried through on my own, from the idea to the guide you find in your hands.

Building a travel guide while travel is banned sounds like a contradiction. It was not. The desire for a place does not stop when you do. That guide was there to keep it alight, ready for the day we could set off again.

A volume I had built myself ended up in the lecture hall in Valladolid. The University of Valladolid acquired it as a case study in international place marketing. When a foreign university puts your work among its study materials, it means the bridge held.

It is an 80-page photographic volume, bilingual Italian and Spanish, documenting Plenilunio di Primavera, the initiative that in 2019 connected the Holy Week rites between Apulia and Spain.

The photo-story follows the stages of the project, Valladolid, Molfetta, Vico del Gargano, Bitonto and Lecce. Inside are the concerts of traditional Apulian and Castilian music, the travelling photographic exhibitions, the food and wine events and the conferences on Easter rites as intangible heritage. Each section recounts a town and what it brought to the dialogue between the two traditions. I built it alone from the first page to the last, editorial project, photographs, text, graphic design and layout.

You do not measure a bridge between two countries while you are building it. You measure it afterwards, by those who cross it. That it was picked up by a university, and not a tourist leaflet, says that work had a structure underneath, not just fine photographs.

In 2019 I brought two Holy Weeks into dialogue, ones that had never spoken to each other, the Apulian one and the one in Valladolid. Two traditions a thousand kilometres apart, the same gestures, the same darkness, the same confraternities walking at night. Placing them side by side was the point of the whole work.

The result was a 160-page volume, trilingual in Italian, Spanish and English, documenting the travelling photographic exhibition of the Plenilunio di Primavera project. Inside are the photographs of the Holy Week rites in Apulia and Spain, the same ones shown at the Apulian and Spanish stops of the exhibition.

I gathered the processional rites of the towns involved, Molfetta, Vico del Gargano, Bitonto, Lecce and Valladolid. The photographs show the processions, the confraternities, the band music and the symbols of Easter faith in the two territories. I took them myself. The critical texts, in three languages, are signed by several authors and recount the traditions of each town and the thread that holds them together. The editorial project, graphic design and layout of the volume I kept in my own hands.

Photographing the same faith in two different countries teaches you something. The rites change language, change name, change city, but underneath they stay identical. That volume does not place Apulia next to Spain to compare them. It puts them side by side to show how much they resemble each other.

 A two-volume boxed set, 350 pages on Easter rites and patron saint festivals from Gargano to Salento. A copy at the Quirinale. Editrice L'Immagine, 2016.

In 2016 the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, requested a copy of this work, through the regional councillor Loredana Capone. A two-volume boxed set, printed in a limited edition, which reached the Quirinale as a symbol of Apulia's cultural value.

It is an editorial work in two volumes, 350 colour pages, published by Editrice L'Immagine, documenting the Easter rites and patron saint festivals of Apulia from Gargano to Salento. The first volume is dedicated to the Easter rites, the second to the patron saint feast. Two faces of the same region, the sacred of the Holy Week processions and the profane that erupts in the village festivals.

Each section recounts the rites of a specific territory, with photographs and texts that place their historical, spiritual and identity meaning in context. The texts are by several authors, a choral work that holds different voices together on a subject that changes from town to town.

My work was to gather and select all the material, the photographs and the texts. In a work covering the entire region, choosing what goes in and what stays out is the part that decides the shape of the book. I worked on the accumulation of years of documentation, keeping what told a tradition from within and leaving out everything else.

A work like this is not leafed through quickly. The boxed set, the limited edition, the 350 pages serve to say one thing, that certain traditions deserve an object worthy of what they recount. The Apulia of the sacred and the profane is not brochure material.