De haut en bas : Salut à la lune, tribu Rendille. Gurunet, Kenya, 2004 Cérémonie du Séma, dercihes tourneurs. Mevlevi. Konya, Turquie, 2004 Exercices Yogi près du Gange. Kumb-Mela, Allahabad, Inde, 2001 Samaritains. Mont Gerizim, 2007 Vigile de prière. Harar, Éthiopie, 2005

4 February - 5 April 2009 What force takes crowds of pilgrims up the highest mountains and across endless stretches of desert? What do people who raise their hands heavenwards and those who touch the ground with their foreheads have in common? Why are some naked, while others are covered so that even their eyes are hidden ? Why are some shaved and polished, while others have long hair and beards matted together in huge turbans? Who are these people with pierced and flagellated bodies and ash-covered limbs ? Who is hidden under the skin, painted or tattooed with overlapping designs? Who lies behind the masks and veils? Do ecstasy, trance, contemplation and meditation lead to an inexpressible perception of death, or to a wrenching form of physical reality? From first-hand experience, with no encyclopedic intentions, I spent eight years working on a photographic project focusing on a personal journey: the Gift. […] Giorgia Fiorio (From “Le Don 2000 2009”, in le Don, Actes Sud, 2009) […] Giorgia Fiorio has recorded powerful moments when human beings search for the meaning of life, truth, and perhaps salvation; but she has also formulated the hypothesis that these moments might be linked by a shared mystery that inhabits the bodies of those she photographs. According to the type of religious or spiritual community to which the person belongs, the body might remain motionless or make all kinds of gestures; it might be ignored as if it were transparent, lacerated or even mutilated. It might tremble frenetically or express great serenity. The focus here is on expression, against the background of a language: of language itself. The body that emanates its often outstanding presence in these images, beyond humanity, constitutes a sign, either on its own or combined with others. It enters into a dialogue with natural elements - water, fire, earth, stone -, or the steel of the instruments characteristic of certain rituals; it engages with the landscape, sometimes trying to melt into it. Alone or with others, it is involved in a movement and takes part in a sequence of which photography records a significant moment. Fiorio’s images make us imagine that moment to be either silent or part of a deafening cacophony. “Le Don” is the story of a confrontation with all those bodies that are also signs: “fragments of discourse” to quote Roland Barthes. Fiorio does not seek to make them easier to understand, nor even to explain them. She leaves us free to follow her along their mysterious roads, or to grasp them in other ways, seeing them as pure forms, a sudden burst of energy or a flash of light. […] Gabriel Bauret (From “Sur les chemins du mystère”, in Le Don, Actes Sud, 2009) www.giorgiafiorio.org