Photography: Giulio Ghirardi gives us a peek inside a delightfully tranquil monastery

It’s usually only when watching The Sound of Music on a Sunday afternoon (happens more often than you’d think) that I muse on what my life would be like if I lived in a convent, but Giulio Ghirardi’s got me pondering it today. The reason being A Different Life, the photographic series he created inside the walls of the Monastery of San Giovanni in Parma, Italy. He photographs the quiet serenity of the buildings and the monks wandering inside it, and even the most unlikely of objects seem imbued with calm when seen through his lens; a bag of bread hanging on a wall, a statue of the Virgin Mary among some foliage. It’s a wonderfully tranquil project, shot through with saturated chunks of light and activity. Lovely stuff.