Tourism, religious and cultural promotion routes in Apulia, eighty pages by Gaetano Armenio, 2010

It was the first chapter of a story I did not yet know I was writing. It was an 80-page colour pamphlet, in Italian, on religious and cultural tourism itineraries in Apulia. At the time it was just an intuition put down on paper.

Looking at it today, I see it is one of the first tools in which my idea of experiential tourism takes shape, the one I would develop over the years with Holy Week in Apulia  and Patron Saints of Apulia  Back then I did not call it that. It was an idea that did not yet have a name, and only later became a method.

I built it as a practical manual. Project proposals with illustrated maps, technical profiles, photographic itineraries and concrete advice for anyone who wants to build or follow cultural and religious tourism routes in Apulia. At the centre of every proposal are two things I never abandoned after that, the experience of those who visit and respect for the traditions of those who welcome them. From the idea to the print I followed it line by line, editorial project, text, photographs, graphic design, layout.

I did not know, in 2010, that those eighty pages were a beginning. Important things rarely announce themselves. You realise it afterwards, when you find them inside everything you did later.

Infinito Finito, a photographic reportage in the Holy Land by Gaetano Armenio, 140 pages, Editrice L'Immagine, 2005

In 2005 I joined the Franciscans of Molfetta, who are the custodians of some of the most important sites in Christianity. I wasn’t setting off as a pilgrim. I set off with my cameras, to see what remained of two thousand years of history in places where Christians, Armenians, Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims cross paths every day.

The result was Infinito Finito, a 140-page full-colour photo-essay in Italian. Nazareth, the Sea of Tiberias, the River Jordan, Mount Tabor, Mount Nebo, Caesarea, Acre, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Petra, Amman. Editrice L’Immagine printed 200 copies, which were sold in bookshops.

The Holy Land is one of the most photographed places on the planet. Anyone who goes there comes back with the same postcard-perfect images. I wanted the opposite: to portray it without the veneer of tourism, capturing the rituals, the real faces and the underlying tension.

That’s why the photographs in this book don’t stand alone. They are accompanied by verses from Palestinian poets, edited by Lucia Avellis. Where I cast my gaze from the outside, those words gave voice to those who live there.

In certain places, there is no such thing as a neutral photograph. Whilst you are observing, you are being observed. The camera does not protect you; it exposes you. Ultimately, that book is not about the Holy Land; it is about what it means to travel through it with a lens in hand.

The publication of the feature article marked the start of the project LA VIA DI GERUSALEMME