NAPEX 410092

Napex 410092 Napoli Explosion

And then there are the eruptions that no one witnessed. Those lost in the world's memory, buried in tectonic layers, mixed with fossils of creatures that were not us. These eruptions foreshadowed forms, prepared the landscapes, anticipated the silence that would follow. The aftermath was the vegetal eruption that covers, the animal eruption that populates and repopulates. It is here that the myths and rituals that constitute the collective narrative of the Earth and its inhabitants are born. They are the photographs of all those ancestral eruptions. However, photography is alive and as unpredictable as dreams. We see it awaken every year. It is the collective consciousness of this place as it prepares to start anew each year. From the top of the geological eras, myths, rituals, and tales, Napoli Explosion emerges from the mountain's memory and participates in its cyclical nature. Mountains, as we know, can be calm, can stand still, can wait. But they bear the memory of the storm in their belly. That memory is the photography that Mario Amura has been creating for years.

Serenella Iovino

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