Updated Aug. 1, 7:57 p.m. | Editors’ Note: After this post was published, the editors learned that at least two of the images, Slides 3 and 10, were composites and had been digitally altered by the photographer to include elements from other photographs taken that same day. Additionally, elements were altered in Slides 6 and 17.

If the editors had known how those images were produced, they would not have been published.

In a follow-up conversation on Wednesday afternoon, Carlo Bevilacqua, the photographer, said he sometimes combines images because “it gives more force to the story I’m trying to tell.”

“It’s not that I wasn’t there — I was there.”

He added that he did not view the project as strictly reportage.

In Slide 3, the man on horseback was cloned into another image. In Slide 6, a vertical portrait was superimposed on a horizontal black background. In Slide 10, the subject’s head was taken from another similar image and cloned onto the body. Also, a cigarette was removed from his hands. In Slide 17, the subject’s finger was altered to be pointing.

Five years of photographing individuals who live in self-imposed isolation from society did not make Carlo Bevilacqua want to become a hermit himself. But it did make him more conscious of the choices he makes, and more aware of his real material needs.

“You don’t need so much to live,” Mr. Bevilacqua said. “Our life is not our stuff.”

Mr. Bevilacqua’s subjects live by themselves, separate from others, by choice. Some have had religious visions and pursue study or prayer. Others are spiritually inclined, but not religious in the classical sense. Then, there are those who just don’t like being among other people in modern society. But all live a life of intentional simplicity and isolation.

He started the project, “Into the Silence,” while photographing a book on the Aeolian Islands, near Sicily. He came across Gisbert Lippelt, a former ship captain who lives by himself in a cave. Mr. Bevilacqua spent a week with him (below), and afterward went on a sojourn to find, and photograph, other hermits. Of course, being hermits, some didn’t particularly want to be found and photographed. Mr. Bevilacqua spent a few days to a week with his subjects, usually living with them.

Carlo Bevilacqua

One of his subjects, Cosmas (Slide 6), had been the chief of a Greek Orthodox monastery in Calabria, Italy, but moved to a hermitage on Mount Athos in Greece. He spent his days studying Ancient Greek and Latin texts. Another, Alfredo (Slide 3), tries to live like American Indians might have before the 20th century — if they were in Calabria.

Vivianna, a former fashion model (Slide 4), was about to marry when she discovered a religious vocation and became a hermit in the mountains near Bologna. She has started a project to support and find suitable housing for others who wish to be hermits.

Though raised in the Catholic Church, Mr. Bevilacqua does not consider himself to be religious. “I’m just reporting what they say,” he said. “God is a mystery. I want it to remain a mystery.”

But one person’s prophet can be another person’s heretic. The difference between being divinely inspired or clinically insane may depend largely on where you are standing.

People who view his photos sometimes remark that there must be something wrong with anyone who chooses a hermit’s life. Mr. Bevilacqua says that isn’t so. “They just have to be alone to listen to their soul.”

Carlo Bevilacqua

Mr. Bevilacqua perceives a parallel between the hermits he has met and some of the photographers he knows. Even though many photographers travel the world, they are often alone, outsiders separated from their subjects lives. “Photographers are always outside the world, no matter where they are,” Mr. Bevilacqua said. “They observe. They sever themselves from the world.”

He chose his path in life 40 years ago when he decided not to follow in the footsteps of his father and uncle by becoming a pastry chef. Instead, Mr. Bevilacqua become a news photographer in his native Sicily. After photographing in his native Sicily for local newspapers he became a portraitist. Now he has a commercial photography studio as well as a video business in Milan.

After spending so much time with hermits, Mr. Bevilacqua believes that greater emphasis on accumulating material wealth, along with the growth of the digital and virtual worlds of video games and social media, has brought mankind further from a quiet pursuit of a simple, reflective life.

He says that this series is like a mirror to the viewer.

“I worked all day long for years to pay for my house, and these people live on nothing, nothing,” he said. “Maybe they are right, and I didn’t really choose. Even if you are not a hermit, you can choose your life.”

Carlo Bevilacqua



Photographs from “Into the Silence” are on exhibit in Cortona, Italy, through Sept. 30 as part of the Cortona On the Move Photography Festival. Work by Jon Lowenstein, Brian Finke and Monika Bulaj are also on display.

:Into The Silence” is represented by Parallel Zero