The Before the Procession series of photographs is a photographic record of my stroll directly before a procession on the feast of Corpus Christi.

I wanted to show the festive climate at my family village of Idzbark and, at the same time, the emanating peace and quiet. The village seemed deserted.

This state “before the procession” reminded me of the “calm before the storm”.

I was also set on presenting the already disappearing customs and on photographing the Masurian (“post-German”) architecture and homesteads, their links with modernity, and their adaptation to the 21^st century. I did not photograph the procession itself as I don’t belong to the catholic church and I didn’t want to encroach on the sacrum space of the people taking part in the procession.

What I did capture was the guest performance of the sacrum in the profanum of the accessible to everyone public space. This view lasts only a few hours as the altars are dismantled shortly after the procession. I managed to capture the very fleeting nature of the sacrum in the sense that Émile Durkheim writes about – as a truly exceptional period of limited duration.