I went to Spain at the end of April to visit my dear friend Emily Yount. She has been living in southern Spain since September, teaching English in a small farming community outside of Sevilla. I chose the week before Easter because, more than anything, I wanted to photograph Semana Santa in Sevilla:
“During Holy Week, the city is crowded with residents and visitors, drawn by the spectacle and atmosphere. The impact is particularly strong for the Catholic community. The processions are organized by hermandades and cofradÃas, religious brotherhoods. During the processions, members precede the pasos (of which there are up to three in each procession) dressed in penitential robes, and, with few exceptions, hoods. They may also be accompanied by brass bands.”
Unfortunately, it rained throughout the week. According to this article, no one can remember a year when this many pasos have been canceled in one Easter week.
A sad sight: chairs all set up and no paso to watch.
We spent a lot of the week hunting Nazarenos — the hermanos from the brotherhoods who act as the penitents wearing robes and masks — and documenting how they are “just like us”!
They find safety in numbers.
They wait for the bus.
They wait out the rain under a bridge.
But, with Easter Sunday also came the sun — if I were a religious person, I might say it was appropriate, or make some kind of pun (Son/sun?) — and we were able to watch a pretty epic, and crowed, paso. You could tell that everyone had a bit of “paso fever” since they had waited all week to attend one!
Pictures:
You can check out the whole set of images from the Domingo de ResurreccÃon paso HERE!.