Description
Napex 241066 Napoli Explosion
Here the light becomes softer, muffled, and floral echoes surface, as in Monet’s Nympheas, dazzled by the blindness that threatened him. In a firework display, do we all really see the same shapes? Is it the artist’s gaze, or lens, that opens a window onto an infinitely vaster spectacle, that of his chromatic and pictorial memory? Photography carries with it the legacy of painting: that ancient gesture of the painter who, since the Renaissance, conceived the image as a window open onto the world. Napoli Explosion
Napoli Explosion
The window of my bedroom overlooked Mount Vesuvius, and every morning, with reverence, I whispered a good morning to it as one would address a slumbering person, afraid of awakening them. The volcano is a living presence for anyone living at its slopes. For over 12 years, on New Year's Eve, my team and I ascend Mount Faito, a mountain overlooking the Bay of Naples, to capture the extraordinary choreography of lights and colors produced by fireworks all around Vesuvius. Through this superstitious and propitiatory ritual, the people of Naples welcome the new year. The image of the black and silent silhouette of the volcano submerged by the cacophony of fireworks' colors seemed to me a representation that needed to be explored seriously and viewed from different perspectives.
Over the years, the project has evolved into an experimentation of new forms of writing with light, using a unique color palette provided by the hundreds of thousands of fireworks exploding simultaneously. Over time, Napoli Explosion has become a work in search of the feeling of light.
