We often speak of the clash of civilizations and religious wars. In the last few years, because of globalization and the quick exchange of ideas and news, everything seems to be closer to us and in conflict with our own culture. We haven’t yet finished thinking and debating one issue before another emerges and plunges our faith, society and culture into the same cauldron.
We forget that knowledge can be a way towards tolerance and the acceptance of differences, and we allow politics, supported by the media, to use religion as a means to achieve its goals often based on evident forms of discrimination.
The principles of respect and equality are necessary in an open society, in which there is a rapid circulation of opinions and of people. It is necessary for non-believers as well.

Photography, more than video, possesses both the qualities of immediacy and slowness: it allows itself be contemplated without dictating a duration, it allows time to think, brings the relationship between the object and the spectator back to a more human dimension.

“…in front of the screen, I am not free to shut my eyes; otherwise, opening them again, I would not discover the same image; I am constrained to a continuous voracity; a host of other qualitites, but not pensiveness…”
(Camera Lucida, R. Barthes)

This is a series of portraits, close-ups, all taken with the same lighting technique and framed in the same manner in order to place all religious beliefs on the same level with equal dignity. One after the other, the eyes of men express their need for respect.