The New Year’s night of fireworks is a storm. And in Naples, having neither author, nor order, nor duration, it becomes a cyclone. The only official display, the one organized by the city, comes late at night; but this is not what defines the celebration.The true eruption of light comes from every balcony, every terrace, every street, where each of the millions of Neapolitans, in their own way, decides to cast their colours into the sky. With his camera, Amura manages to tame this hurricane. In his gesture, the whirlwind finds discipline; the typhoon becomes rhythm. In this image, the wind, or perhaps an invisible fire-master, seems to have aligned a row of red bursts to rise in the same direction. Such a moment, if it truly existed, would have lasted the blink of an eye. But more than a real instant, it is the result of the photographer’s movement, of his gaze in action: like a painter magician, he manages to give shape and meaning to a multitude of explosions that, in themselves, have none. This is the power of art: to disorder order, to order disorder, to create form where none exists, and to deform it when it threatens to become rigid.Napex 410378

Sylvain Bellenger