Presentation of the Poster of Holy Week 2021
The image of the Christ of the Coronation of Thorns, through the lens of José María Cámara Salmerón, stars in the poster with a shocking close-up full of dramatic expressiveness.
Just as each evening is followed by night and then morning; it is not possible to stop the time or the passing of the seasons. Holly Week comes to our Cieza, as it has reached all corners of the world for almost two millenniums, above what nature and civilizations had planned for each of those years. It now arrives in 2021, and it finds us again involved with this pandemic, which is causing so much suffering in the world. Which also means that another year, the processions will not come out, nor will we be able to turn these days into that permanent reunion that means so much in our lives.
But it is still Holy Week, we are in Cieza, and the ‘cofrades’ can’t look elsewhere as if these dates, when they came orphaned from parades, were no longer with us. We continue to have the obligation to announce to the world that we are going to commemorate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ, who did not suffer, died, and rose again to give an opportunity to the processions, but to give a meaning to our happiness and pain, to be hopeful and to fill our existence with meaning. We cannot live the commemoration of these essential days in the History of Salvation as we would have liked. But this is not a reason to abandon our condition as ‘confreres’, or to stop reminding the people from Cieza that here, in this town, if it is Holy Week all year round, as we like to say so much, it is also Holly Week every year, also this one, also in 2021.
And that is why the Board of Passionate Brotherhoods proudly presents its Holy Week 2021 poster, illustrated on this occasion with a splendid photograph of the Christ passing through the Coronation of Thorns, a magnificent work by Romero Zafra from the Brotherhood of Jesús Nazareno.
The author of the photograph, José María Cámara Salmerón, who has renewed the role of winner of the Contest that he already achieved in the last edition, incarnate in himself some of the main virtues of the ‘Cofrade’ of race: enthusiasm, desire to improve, work, constancy; all this put at the service of an unquestionable artistic instinct, and a clamorous mastery of photographic technique. José María Cámara has achieved the very difficult challenge of reaching the category of last year's unforgettable poster, with Ecce Homo as the main protagonist. Two posters twinned by their author and their studio status, but very different in communication and impact: the serene and majestic elegance of González Moreno's work, which Cámara Salmerón pushed to the limit with its composition and wise administration of the light, now make a path to the gaze by the pain of this Christ, who challenges the viewer with the unappeasable forcefulness of a very close sight, underlined by an even more risky composition and by an intense game of light and shadows to emphasize the drama.
The result will not only remind the hole world the excellence of the imaginary heritage of our Holy Week, but also invites us to have a thought about the Passion, which Christ voluntarily accepted to be united with all humanity in suffering, so that no one could ever feel abandoned by God, because He himself became flesh, suffered the fragility of the flesh, and then defeated death leaving the tomb empty. We offer this poster to the people of Cieza knowing that in many homes of our town there is pain because of the loss, and there is uncertainty and fear. And we offer it in public, as a ‘confreres’ that we are, giving everything that this condition implies: faith, brotherhood, prayer, penance, and above all, hope.
The pandemic will subside, we will embrace each other with the tunic on us, and we will once again bring the Saints to the streets. But we won’t wait to live what we are until that moment, even if we take off our tunic, and we won’t stop saying, to the four winds and with all pride, "this is Cieza, we are in Holy Week.”
