Description
Napex 255041 Napoli Explosion
By freezing, in the instant of the shot, the profusion of movement in this immense firework created by millions of individuals whose only ambition is the explosion of colour, the photographer brings order to the moment. Disorder becomes a form of harmony, even if, in the reading of the image itself, it is that disorder that is in charge. One cannot even invoke informal freedom: informal painting, however unrestrained, always obeys a kind of controlled balance. Here, on the contrary, photography is not devoid of harmony, but harmony is not its purpose: its purpose is disorder itself. It is here that a deeper truth is revealed: a force and a visual reality belonging only to photography, capable of transforming chaos into vision and, for an instant, turning it into a form of knowledge.
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.
