The Giraffe's JoyPalio di Siena — Andrea Scirè

Project Info

Silence.

Behind Piazza del Campo, during the Palio di Provenzano, there was a silence so dense it had its own weight — broken only by the muffled sound of a television and the held breath of the spectators. The bars were packed with contradaioli and journalists. The streets outside were empty.

Then a voice cut through everything.

“Giraffe. It’s the Giraffe!”

What followed was not celebration in the ordinary sense. The losers dissolved into the city’s shadows, leaving the streets to the winners — their cries, their embraces, their tears directed towards a temporary Patron, a Madonna honoured for one impossible, lawful, illicit, human day. The Palio is a race in which every action — permitted or not — is tacitly accepted in pursuit of victory or the rival’s defeat. It has always been this way. It will always be this way.

The Giraffe’s Joy does not document the race. It documents what happens when the race ends — the raw, unguarded moment when an entire community stops performing and simply feels.