The way of cross

Photographer

Krzysztof Muskalski

Category

Black & White Photography - Symbolic

Company

Submission Group

Professional

Year

2026

Country / Region:

Poland

The photograph shows a dramatic path leading through the abandoned ruins of a leprosarium in Tenerife, through a forgotten place of suffering and isolation. The road is dominated by a vast, striking shadow of a cross cast on the ground by the still-standing structure of the former church. The composition creates a refined symbolism of the “Way of the Cross” — not only as a religious event, but as a path of human suffering, exclusion, and spiritual trial endured by those afflicted by leprosy. In black and white, every wall, every broken edge, and every step along this road becomes an embodiment of inner burden, a reflection on exile, loneliness, and the strange stigma once attached to the bodies of the sick. Yet here, the cross, the emptiness, and the road together remind us that even in abandonment, spirituality can be most visible.

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