Carrying just a single, unobtrusive camera, photographer Piers Rawson spent several days on the streets of Seville during the Semana Santa Easter celebrations.

Rawson was looking for the more intimate, human face and telling details behind the solemn outward formality and religious fervour of the Spanish Holy Week. Behind the showy theatricality and emotional intensity of the famous processions, this is a time for families, for commercial opportunities and for the display of social status.

Battling through the communion clothes, shoes and mantillas competing for space with tear-stained Madonnas, sugar-candy penitents and confectionery crucifixions, Rawon’s images of lifelike mannequins and emotive devotional statues reveal the reality behind the suffocating hoods of the penitents.

Small Moments: The Human Face of Semana Santa, 18/04/2012 – 19/05/2012, Forest Arts Centre, New Milton, Hampshire, BH25 6DS. www.scenae.co.uk/www.forest-arts.co.uk

Captions:
All images courtesy the artist