[imagesource: Alex Majoli]

The lockdown in Italy was initially scheduled to end earlier this month, but on March 31, this was extended to at least the end of April.

Italy is one of the countries hit hardest by the pandemic, due in part to its ageing population.

As it stands, it has more than 115 000 confirmed cases, close to 14 000 deaths, and more than 18 000 recoveries. According to Al Jazeera, the virus appears to be slowing down, and officials are cautiously optimistic that this could be the turning point in their battle against the contagion.

At the height of the crisis, in March, Italian-born photographer Alex Majoli was doing an artist residency in the town of Codogno.

He decided to head to Sicily to get a real sense of what was going on. Vanity Fair spoke to him about his experience:

“I was born in the north, Ravenna,” says Majoli, who also maintains an apartment in Brooklyn. “Up north, people are good at masking their anguish. But in Sicily, everything is always more theatrical, more epic. They feel sorrow more deeply, more philosophically, because their worldview is a couple of centuries behind. In Sicily, I realized, I’d see more of a visual sense of this tragedy.”

Many Italians fled the north, where morgues were filling up and hospitals were turning away non-critical patients. While in Sicily, Majoli used his photography to capture the pandemic, with hauntingly beautiful results.

Carmelo Iacobello, head of the infectious-disease department at Cannizzaro Hospital, meets with his team:

Photo: Alex Majoli

A paramedic sprays down hospital beds:

Photo: Alex Majoli

At Palermo’s church of Santa Rosalia, a priest and an aide pray:

Photo: Alex Majoli

An animal-rescue worker feeds abandoned strays in Siracusa:

Photo: Alex Majoli

Inside a bus in Catania, the driver has put up a masking-tape barrier to separate himself from his passengers:

Photo: Alex Majoli

Piazza Santa Lucia, in Siracusa:

Photo: Alex Majoli

Shoppers buy artichokes and oranges in Catania, Sicily:

Photo: Alex Majoli

A man checks his cellphone on the steps of a church in Siracusa:

Photo: Alex Majoli

Siracusa’s Santa Lucia square:

Photo: Alex Majoli

A man in Catania who pushed and then abandoned this shopping cart a few times, while talking to himself:

Photo: Alex Majoli

Italians are dealing with the lockdown in some spectacular ways, like keeping each other entertained with music performed from balconies. 

For more pictures from Alex Majoli, go here.

You’ve got to respect a country whose people find a way to keep joy alive against all odds.

[sources:aljazeera&vanityfair]