Waiting for the Justice to Arrive

In this hallway of the Tribunale Penale di Roma, time seems suspended. Lawyers sit or stand, briefcases at their feet, bundles of files in hand. Some engage in hushed conversation, others review notes with ritualistic precision. A woman in red draws the eye—a rare burst of colour in an otherwise subdued palette of solemnity.

The title, Waiting for the Justice to Arrive, operates on two planes.

On the surface, it is procedural. The court has not yet opened its doors; the judge is late, the hearing is postponed. These legal professionals must simply wait—idle, static, alert. Justice, here, is both person and principle: the judge must enter the courtroom for proceedings to begin.

On a deeper level, the phrase reverberates with existential irony. In a place designed to uphold justice, its arrival feels tentative, perhaps distant. Is justice late? Absent? Still deliberating?

This photograph reveals no drama, no trial, no verdict. Instead, it captures the prelude—a pause heavy with expectation, fatigue, and a quiet kind of resignation.

In that sense, the image becomes not only a document of place and profession, but a reflection on the legal system itself. Justice, always about to begin, always being prepared for—yet never quite there.