Capuchin Crypt

Philip Ringler

2010

In 2010, I wrote to the Italian government with a formal request to photograph inside the Capuchin Crypt in Rome—an ossuary unlike any other, where the bones of thousands of Capuchin monks have been arranged into elaborate compositions: chandeliers of vertebrae, clocks built from finger bones, skulls crowned with wings. The crypt itself is an architectural memento mori, a space where death is not just acknowledged but meticulously designed.

A year later, in 2011, I was granted permission. Thirty minutes. No more, no less. Given the rarity of this access, I knew I had to work with complete focus, moving methodically through the space with my tripod and a limited supply of 35mm black-and-white technical pan film. There was no time for hesitation. I photographed feverishly, seeking out the most significant imagery—not just the obvious displays of mortality, but the compositions that struck me as layered, ambiguous, or strangely human.

The atmosphere of the crypt was overwhelming. The scent of death, centuries old yet still lingering, mixed with the damp air. It was impossible to ignore. Walking beyond the usual barriers, my feet were quite literally among the remains of monks who had lived and died with the belief that their physical form, in death, could continue to serve a purpose. Each bone had been placed with intention, forming symbols and structures meant to remind visitors of life’s transience.

But in my images, that immediate, physical experience—the odor, the warmth of decay in the air, the sickly hues of age—was stripped away. The black-and-white photographs further abstracted the crypt’s arrangements, isolating them from their sensory context. Without color or smell, the images became more about form, meaning, and composition. They became something both documentary and surreal, a quiet meditation on the way we aestheticize mortality.

This project aligns with my broader artistic practice: using photography to explore ideas that are difficult to articulate in words, creating images that balance humor, philosophy, and contradiction. The Capuchin Crypt is a place of both reverence and eeriness, a space that forces you to consider mortality in a way that feels oddly designed—an infrastructure of the afterlife. And that is the space I often work within: the intersection of the real and the constructed, where objects and settings are imbued with meaning beyond their immediate function.