True Fiction
Gilberto Copaldi
The Weight of White/The Hidden Archive
Gilberto Copaldi
1915-1993
Before there was a Vatican photographer, there was Gilberto Copaldi.
He began in silence—capturing behind-the-scenes moments of Church life in his spare time. Not for commission. Not for history. Simply to see. His early photographs were intimate, meditative—fragments of faith rendered in shadow and breath. A Pope standing alone in thought. A vestment folded like a question. Light touching marble as if by memory.
It was Pope Pius XII, his close friend, who took notice. Moved by Gilberto’s quiet vision, he asked him to take on a role that had never existed before:
the first official photographer to the Vatican.
Gilberto accepted. And so began decades of service, image, and access.
He documented canonizations, processions, and papal visits. His public archive is elegant and ceremonial—devoted to preserving the grandeur of the Church.
But alongside that work, with the Vatican’s awareness and the Pope’s blessing, Gilberto created something else:
A personal record. A poetic contradiction.
He called it The Weight of White.
These photographs are strange. Arresting.
A clergyman standing alone on a suspended scaffold, head bowed.
A cardinal with the face of a demon, eyes turned inward.
A priest split into multiple selves, each one silently watching the others.
They are not blasphemous.
They are sacred in their honesty.
What Gilberto saw was not scandal—it was vulnerability.
What he captured was not power—it was fracture, transformation, and faith under tension.
Raised in a coastal village, Gilberto had once trained for the priesthood. That early formation shaped everything—his discipline, his restraint, his sense of visual liturgy. But after leaving the Vatican in 1971, he did not retire into silence. He continued photographing, refining his work with a deepening sense of abstraction and surrealism.
In his later years, he formed a close friendship with Henri Cartier-Bresson.
The two shared a belief that truth lived somewhere between observation and instinct—between timing and trust.
After his death in Sicily in 1993, a series of handwritten notebooks were found among his belongings. Though they did not describe specific images, they explored the spiritual and emotional concepts behind The Weight of White: themes of isolation, repetition, devotion, and doubt. These texts were later used to shape the commentary in the published edition of the work, allowing Gilberto’s own reflections to guide the reader.
He was beloved by his parish.
Remembered, quietly, by those who knew what he had given the Church—
and what he had given to photography.
His archive, both official and private, remained intact.
And now, finally, the world is ready to see The Weight of White.
True Fiction
The Weight of White
True Fiction
The Hidden Archive
Each image from The Hidden Archive is displayed within an old photographic album page—edges worn, corners softened by time. No two pages are the same. Some are embossed, others stained or faded, each carrying its own quiet history. It’s unclear who assembled them, or why. But the effect is intimate—less like an exhibition, more like the private act of paging through someone else’s memory. Together, they hint at a past that was carefully kept, then quietly forgotten.
Alongside the photographs, several of Gilberto Copaldi’s personal belongings are displayed: the camera he carried, worn smooth from years of use; his rosary, delicate and darkened with time; fragments of his vestments; and two nearly complete photo albums. These objects offer a more intimate connection to the man behind the lens—quiet relics of a life lived in proximity to faith, ritual, and mystery. They feel less like artifacts of a career, and more like clues to a private devotion.
