Nine-year-old Maria wakes up and can’t wait for her party day to get started, after the first communion sacrament she received the day before. When the photographers and the videomakers arrive at her home, she slips into her bedroom and puts on some makeup to welcome the guests. She is ready for the day she will never forget.

Maria on the morning of the party day. When the photographers and videomakers arrive at her home, she runs into her bedroom to put on some makeup.

Maria at home during a photo shoot. Right: Giusy at home being helped by her mother into the dress she has just bought.

First communion in Naples is not just a religious sacrament but is experienced as an important rite of passage to be properly celebrated, and a community event with many levels of interpretation and meaning, not just limited to religion.

Eleonora and Giusy play and dance at the Princess Royal Palace in Telese during the party for their first communion.

For the young person involved and for their family the holy communion is filled with social and moral public obligations to be fulfilled, from wearing expensive clothes to providing banquets and putting on spectacular stage shows with bands singing modern Neapolitan pop music.

Doves are often released during the communion ceremonies to add to the spectacle.

Maria posing for a photo shoot at the Grand Hotel La Sonrisa.

Maria during a photo shoot before her party. Right: leaving her house with her parents on the day of the celebration.

In recent years, communions have often become more important than weddings, especially for parents who have had children before marriage. The celebration of their child’s communion becomes the feast of their dreams, the one they did not have for their wedding, and it is also perceived as an entrance into society.

Even though in 1910 the Pope reduced the age for receiving the sacrament from 10-14 years old to seven, the first communion in the social context appears to be still related to the arrival of puberty, especially for the female communicants, often called spose bambine (child brides). They are in fact dressed, embellished and treated like young brides, with elaborate and expensive dresses made in the city’s best ateliers.

In the designer’s atelier, Francesca tries on her dress for last-minute adjustments as her mother and grandmother look on.

Francesca in the studio for pre-communion photographs.

Miriam and Ivana styling the photo shoot in their studio, Oreste Pipolo.

It is even more beautiful than I expected - it’s important because for a special day we need a special dress Francesca

Francesca during her dress rehearsal.

In this photographic project Diana Bagnoli follows the daughters of the famous photographer of events and ceremonies, Oreste Pipolo, called “the shaman of weddings”. His daughters, Ivana and Miriam, inherited their father’s studio and, like him, they sell a dream, building elaborate photo sets before, during and after the first communion day.

Maria’s sister in the living room with relatives and neighbours who came to congratulate her.

Maria on her phone during the first communion lunch that will last almost the whole day.

All the big expenditures – banquets, dresses, entertainments, photo shoots and so on – serve to convey a sense of social worth and to mark, or sometimes re-establish, the status of the communicant’s family within the local community. There is also a competitive element in displaying and sharing your goods with the community members and putting on the best and most lavish show.

Such behaviour appears to be particularly related to a social milieu that is historically connected to poverty; to show economic capacity may mean power but also social improvement. And it is also related to the high level of “theatricality” of Neapolitans in the public space, as observed by anthropologists who have done fieldwork in Naples – including myself, having carried out ethnographic work in this city for more than a decade.

A band performs for Giusy in the street. Below: a serenade from the window of Giusy’s home.

The celebration of the first communion, as it involves young children and the whole community, holds a great social meaning. It is a premise and a promise for future success. And it has to be a day to remember forever.

Irene poses during dress rehearsals for her first holy communion in the historic Naples shop Fratelli Martone, a specialist for a century in ceremonial clothing for children.

Eleonora posing at Lido Elena di Posillipo during a photo shoot with the Pipolo photographers.