NAPEX 241071

Napex 241071 Napoli Explosion

The great cultural revolution of our time is linked to the evolution of technology. Digitalization is transforming our memory, our way of thinking, and our way of organizing language. Napoli Explosion is born in the era of digital imagery and celebrates the new millennium by using fireworks that could be invented but are instead captured through photography. What strikes me the most is that it is precisely photography, the oldest art of technically capturing reality, that proves to be the most imaginative. Napoli Explosion

Sylvain Bellenger

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.

Mario Amura

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