Chapels of Desire is an ongoing photographic series that highlights public calisthenics structures. These fitness installations, designed to sculpt bodies in public spaces, are reinterpreted here as relics of an era obsessed with physical optimization. Captured under twilight skies, those installations, refers to the idea of a temple dedicated to the adoration of the body, where each exercise becomes an offering in the pursuit of a physical ideal, not to make the body just strong, but also desirable. These structures, now present all over the public space, are here detached from their original purpose. They are no longer tools for sculpting the body in a collective effort, but monuments to a body crafted for desirability. The frame that encircles each image acts as an artifact of perception, both vitrails and a magnifying lens. This formal choice echoes ancient dioramas and museum vitrines, creating tension between the intimate and the museum-like, between the present and a fantasized past. 


Chapels of Desire interrogates the relationship between nature and culture, between the organic and the industrial. While nature, in its purest form, is linked to instinct and the body’s inherent imperfections, culture, through its constructions, seeks to impose a norm: a standardized body, sculpted in its own image.
These structures, designed to strengthen and enhance the body, are confronted here with unreal, pictorial landscapes, where they become silent symbols of a world where muscle reigns and effort becomes a quiet spectacle. They are artifacts, relics of a culture that treats bodily optimization as the path to perfection.

Chapels of Desire is an ongoing photographic series that highlights public calisthenics structures. These fitness installations, designed to sculpt bodies in public spaces, are reinterpreted here as relics of an era obsessed with physical optimization. Captured under twilight skies, those installations, refers to the idea of a temple dedicated to the adoration of the body, where each exercise becomes an offering in the pursuit of a physical ideal, not to make the body just strong, but also desirable. These structures, now present all over the public space, are here detached from their original purpose. They are no longer tools for sculpting the body in a collective effort, but monuments to a body crafted for desirability. The frame that encircles each image acts as an artifact of perception, both vitrails and a magnifying lens. This formal choice echoes ancient dioramas and museum vitrines, creating tension between the intimate and the museum-like, between the present and a fantasized past. 


Chapels of Desire interrogates the relationship between nature and culture, between the organic and the industrial. While nature, in its purest form, is linked to instinct and the body’s inherent imperfections, culture, through its constructions, seeks to impose a norm: a standardized body, sculpted in its own image.
These structures, designed to strengthen and enhance the body, are confronted here with unreal, pictorial landscapes, where they become silent symbols of a world where muscle reigns and effort becomes a quiet spectacle. They are artifacts, relics of a culture that treats bodily optimization as the path to perfection.