Gli Isolani (The Islanders)

Gli Isolani (The Islanders) is the latest project by British photographer Alys Tomlinson. The project documents traditional costumes and masks worn during festivities and celebrations on islands of the Venetian lagoon, Sicily and Sardinia. Over two years, Alys photographed locals dressed in costumes inspired by paganism, fables and folklore. The photographs in Gli Isolani (The Islanders) by Alys Tomlinson, inhabit a hinterland between fiction and reality. Over a period of two years, Tomlinson documented the traditional costumes and masks worn during festivals and celebrations on the islands of the Venetian lagoon, Sicily and Sardinia.

Working again on analogue film with a large format plate camera, the images evoke a timeless quality and invite us to enter a mysterious world of good and evil, the sacred and profane. Set against rural fields and crumbling stone, many of the portraits appear as characters we may have encountered in our own imagination, as boundaries between fiction and reality become blurred.

Working with a large format 4x5 camera, Gli Isolani draws upon the visual language of Tomlinson’s previous projects, lending the black and white photographs a veil of timelessness. At the project’s genesis, Alys researched the literature and poetry connected to the history and culture of the islands of Italy, exploring tradition and identity, ancient myths, folklore and fairy tales. Set against crumbling stone and rural fields, the images depict the elaborate and uncanny costumes and masks worn for Holy Week, and other events and festivals, often inspired by pagan ritual and beliefs. The fantastical tales and precious costumes have been passed down many generations within these communities where customs run deep. The gestures and the costumes depicted in the photographs draw on the relationship between man and the land, the sacred and the profane, and good and evil.

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