For eight years Tiago Santana turned his lens on the town where the mythical Padre Cícero lived, and shows it here in seventy photographs. To portray the world of the faithful, straw hats on their heads and rosaries round their necks, he chose high-contrast black and white, which carries the hard light of the northeastern sertão and takes on the sacred and profane duality of cordel woodcuts. He worked with a wide-angle lens, which among other things lets him come very close to the person in front of him — sometimes a penitent asking for grace by touching the statue of the famous priest, sometimes someone dressed in black paying a vow. Santana wanted in this way to keep away from the obvious record, to avoid the hubbub of the crowds and to render something of each person’s private pact with the sacred. As part of that aim he travelled with the pilgrims even on the back of open lorries, on journeys of forty hours, and lost count of how many times he went to Juazeiro do Norte between 1992 and 1999.