What happens when an intelligent Sicilian intellectual finds himself in Lithuania, more than 3,000 km north of his native land? A lot of things. First of all, a cultural "short-circuit" that explodes when fundamentally different habits and traditions collide. The landscape changed from the arid, sunny island of Trinacria (the name given to Sicily by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides), sacred to the sun god who kept his pastures there, to the frozen expanses of the Baltic Sea and the boundless forests that surround it. These lands are home to beautiful cities, and they are inhabited by particularly charming people, and especially women - tall, blue-eyed, with long and wavy or straight, blond or red hair. Like goddesses who have come out of the woods to walk among us for a while, proud and mysterious women who are actually much closer to the Sicilian women than one might think.

So, Gianluca Sodaro, the acclaimed director, writer and photographer, has experienced a "short circuit". And then he started photographing these women, naturally carrying with him the legacy of his Italian and Sicilian artistic and historical culture, a fusion that sends shivers down the spine. "Praygirl is the title of this exhibition because almost all the women in the 16 photographs are captured in prayer.

The 16 women from Lithuania are of different ages and are in fact not all Lithuanian: one is black, another is Muslim. In the end, it makes little difference, they are all alluring in their own way and have their own stories, revealed and captured by Sodaro's careful study and observation of each of them. Among them, the most striking is Dovilė, whose head is covered by a lace veil, whose arms are folded and who wears dark glasses. She prays with reverent devotion in Vilnius Cathedral, but perhaps this is not her place after all. This woman, with those glittering and feverish eyes behind the glasses, resembles a modern version of the Irish novelist Le Fanu's Carmilla, a dangerous vampire on the loose, more than a humble prayer - she is sweet, melancholic, but also ready to choke her victim's throat until she suffocates.

The other women are no jokes either - Kristina is praying in the theatre, lost in gloomy thoughts and possibly intent on revenge, the beautiful Nijolė is crying with sunken cheeks and expressively clasping her knobby hands, Sandra is praying to the Most High in the cloudy sky, and it is clear that no one there will hear her. The red-haired Erna, smoking a cigarette, thinks about her God, and her piercing face wanders erratically. Margarita, the beautiful Margarita, prays and begs passionately, like a praying maid from the olden days - is she in the throes of love? Then there is Austeia, enveloped in the harmony of her garnet red and purple colours, matching her pink body, immersed in ecstasy-like prayer, then there is Dove, looking mournfully and silently up at the sky against a backdrop of ruins that look like Ukrainian cities. The aristocratic and exhausted Daiva, supremely elegant, prays among works of art as precious as herself. The most remarkable of all the women is the restless Sabina, whose bright red hair looks full of thorns between the branches - she watches us with a pained gaze and big, troubled blue eyes. Others are calmer (at least at first sight): Sophie, who looks like a meditating Mother of God, Deimantė with her prayer book in which she searches for words of reassurance, Sania with two roses in her hands, as if inviting us to silent harmony, Anna, all gold and ebony like the black-skinned Mary, and Yuratya, to whom old age has given her the gentleness to contemplate the past and the future with a smile on her face.

Who could say that finding women, beautiful and almost all young, and getting them to pose for the lens is easy? And yet these women are probably not exactly traditional. Do they not represent something from the past that is no longer relevant today? First of all, Sodaro, who studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he was a student of Emilio Isgrò, Emilio Tadini and Gianni Colombo, among others, creates his images through careful research and a meticulous attention to detail - he searches for clothes, veils, rosettes, he organises make-up sessions, and he imagines the scene of the photograph as a painter might a vision for a painting. But first, he is haunted for months by his ghost, the woman he carries around in his head, and searches for her among the many faces in the crowd until he finds her. Complex art. But, it is worth emphasising, his photographs are not like posters, indicating only one point of view or a theory constructed at the workbench. They convey a message, perhaps an allegorical one, they present modern women, self-conscious owners, young and old, women who have lived or want to live, hope and act.

These women are at once sentimental, sensual, very strong and as cold as the ice-covered land where they live. Some of them, like Margarita and Sophia, if we look at the allusions to the work of the artists Guido Reni and Carlo Dolci, are reminiscent of the famous paintings of which we often find reproductions in the homes of devout Italians. Others belong to the Pre-Raphaelite world - Deimante may be a descendant of Elizabeth Siddal, the striking model of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. And Yurati, so multifaceted and angular, may have come from a painting by Egon Schiele.

These are photographs that testify to a high level of professionalism, based on precise codes of artistic research. One of these should be highlighted: the high quality of the colour prints, always under the direct supervision of the author.

All sixteen women in this exhibition tell their own story, and Sodaro manages to capture the energy and essence of these mysterious figures who inhabit a dreamlike universe filled with cinematic and literary references, leaving a distinctive and unmistakable imprint, and creating a style that can be ironic but never vulgar. Did they exist before? Do they really exist? And what is their essence? They flash all the most complex aspects of the female soul.

Sodaro's women are fictional characters who actually existed, and they all play with death, they are angels exploring the darkness, they are a succession of scattered images, they are inconsolable and hard to tame.