Mario Amura
Mario has a secret. Whenever he takes his pictures, he becomes invisible. He is able to shoot hundreds of photos and remain completely unnoticed, like a placard on a wall or a lamppost at a street corner. I have never understood how he can do so, but maybe this is the key of art-making: being at once invisible and yet indisputably there, compressing the your own presence and voice in order to allow a magnified expression of the world around you, just like creation in Izak Luria’s tzim-tzum.
Mario AmuraSerenella Iovino
Mario Amura was born in Naples in 1973 and studied Photography at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (C.S.C.), under the guidance of the master Giuseppe Rotunno. From 2000 to 2012, he handled the photography for various cinematic works showcased at prestigious international festivals such as Cannes, Berlinale, and the Venice Biennale. In 2003, he was honored with the David di Donatello award from the Italian Cinema Academy for the short film "Racconto di Guerra," set in the besieged Sarajevo of 1996.
Starting in 2005, Amura embarked on the StopEmotion project, initiating his photographic exploration aimed at fragmenting the linearity of chronological time into emotional peaks. Time emerges purified, ceasing to be a measure and becoming a tangible object, with its essence being the visibility of emotions. Employing the StopEmotion technique, he collected photographic material in Bosnia, India, rural China, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Latin America, England, and France. His photographic reportage projects are characterized by the need to mature over extensive periods.
Since 2007, he has been working on the ongoing Fujenti project. Napoli Explosion is a project that began in 2010 and is still in progress.
