Naples on the edge: Photography of Norma Rossetti
11 Jun 2009 2 Comments
in exhibits Tags: IIC, Naples, photography, Rossetti, Scampia
a resident of Scampia, north of Naple
Norma Rossetti’s photos of Scampia, the infamous town of nightmarish highrises north of Naples, takes the viewer to a fantasy land of monumental corruption, insidious criminality and baroque visions of gilded, store-bought beauty. Rossetti photographs her subjects in their most comfortable surroundings, be it in a dining room filled with plastic souvenirs or a candy store that sells penny candies next to a box of syringes, or in the garbage lined streets. People show their tatoos, their gaudy bedroom furniture and their flabby bellies with a naturalness that is disarming, tragic and somehow hopeful. They are people without pretensions, and with a survival instinct that will not be easily conquered.
At the opening, Norma Rossetti spoke about her modus operandi in making this series of portraits. She spent nearly one year making contacts and visiting her new acquaintances in Sampia. She shared drinks and dinners and experiences with these people in order to bring them to the level of ease apparent in her images. In this work, she said that she was greatly helped by her knowledge of Naples and her sex, in that women are respected in a special way in Southern Italy, and this attitude made much of her work possible.
Scampia is a new town, a sort of “ville-champignon” as the French call them, because they seem to spring up overnight. It was built to accommodate people who were displaced by the 1980 earthquake that hit Naples, and was intended to move a part of the population out of the dense urban center. However, the town never found the correct rhythm of development or the right spirit of community, and it quickly began to fall apart.
Today it is considered a tremendous failure. On the other hand, Rosanna Rummo, the director of the IIC, added that although Scampia has become a symbol of urban decay in recent years with the publication of Roberto Saviano’s book, Gomorrah, and Matteo Garrone’s film adaptation of it, people
in the town have begun to find ways of improving their quality of life, with self-help organizations and theater and artistic groups which have been organized in recent years. The situation is bleak, but not at all hopeless, something that seems to come through in the photography.
Norma Rossetti began working in black and white traditional photography, but soon found that this medium was not allowing the images to express the reality she was seeing. She switched to digital photography, and that is what is she is showing. It is clear why she has chosen digital: the vibrant colors of people’s private lives, contrasting with the dull, dirty darkness of public life in Scampia is striking. Also the enormous detail of the baroque lives seem to dance in layers in the perspectives of these scenes.
Exhibit at IIC's historic home, Hôtel de Galliffet.
The exhibition is at the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, and remains on view until July 10th. The exbibition room is open from 10h-13h and 15h-18h on weekdays, daytime entrance on rue de Varenne. It is second in a series of five photo exhibits, part of the 2009 focus on Naples at the Institute, called L’Or de Naples. The subtitle of this year long program is “Baroque underground,” and Norma Rossetti’s photography gives a fascinating interpretation of that odd phrase. All five exhibits will have a beautiful book version available from Silvana Editoriale, so if you are unable to get to the exhibit you can always consider buying the very reasonably priced book.
Related post on Blogblot:
Scampia and South Bronx: burnt more by sin or by indifference?
and elsewhere:
Gomorrah – A book and a film describe the Modern Plagues of Naples
Visages de Naples: 5 photo exhibits in Paris
19 May 2009 1 Comment
in exhibits Tags: 1950s, Garolla, IIC, Naples, Neapolitan, Paris, photography, streetlife
The Italian Cultural Institute in Paris, which, under the direction of Rosanna Rummo, has got to be the most active and exciting Italian cultural center in the world, has inaugurated a series of photographic exhibits focusing on the fascinating and thoroughly frustrating city of Naples.
The first in this series, 40 photographs by Federico Garolla, entitled “Naples années 50″ is currently showing at
the IIC’s exhibition space at it’s home, 73 rue de Grenelle in the historic Hôtel de Galliffet. This exhibit is about people, in the streets, at schools and in the marketplace, and always in public, because, after all, this is Naples. It includes many photographs of children, as most of the prints come from his study, “Enfance Abandonée.” The children are wonderfully expressive of the energetic attempts that were made in that city to move forward in the postwar years. There are photos of children unsupervised, carousing, playing, contemplating and swaggering in the public places of the city. But there are even more photos of children being subjected to an enforced comformity of institutional life: children washing at communal sinks, standing at attention in a descending stairwell, grimacing in a communal mirror. the contrast between the damning liberty of streetlife, and on the other hand, the deadening uniformity of state programs. To me, this is the underlying theme of the exhibit, this juxtaposition. It so ably articulates the inability of postwar Italy to channel the great partenopea energy in a creative way and it gives us some understanding of why the great city has not managed to keep up with the rest of Europe in these decades. It’s hard to know what might have worked better, and this is perhaps the tragedy of Naples that comes through in this wonderfully evocative images.
What makes it worse, is that the doomed exuberance of Neapolitan life is exactly what draws us to the city’s culture. People love to see these Neapolitans, with their anachronistic Mediterranean ways, ways that will get them exactly nowhere in the Twenty-first Century. And the Neapolitans are happy to accept the deadly embrace. Ariane Bavelier in Le Figaro, says, “Les 40 clichés de Garolla mettent en relief cette alchimie de dévotion, d’espièglerie et d’incongru qui définit l’inégalable chanson des rues napolitaines. Un régal !” (Garolla’s 40 images put on display the devotion, the roguishness and the incongruity that together make up the unique music of Neapolitan streets. A treat!) Yes, it is a treat for the viewer, but perhaps a bit less for the city on the bay. In any case, Garolla’s photos magnificently present this paradox and makes these arguments come to life.
This first exhibit runs until May 29, 2009. The catalog for this and each exhibit will be published by Silvana editoriale (click the image for info.)
It will be followed by:
Norma Rossetti: Naples, péripherie nord, (vernissage or opening, June 10, running until July 10, 2009). Like many European cities, Naples has its disastrous “banlieues”, those crumbling townships on the outskirts of town with their apartment blocks full of society’s underclass. The subject here is the banlieue named Scampia, which has become familiar as the locale for the book and film Gomorra.
Antonio Biasucci / Oreste Zevola: Figures rituelles. (vernissage September 16, running until October 23, 2009). This will have ex votos as its subject, those traditional metal objects which are used to embody the hopes and thanks of believers for help gained through saintly intervention.
Alain Volut: Ombres. (vernissage November 12, running until January 15, 2010). The vision of a French photographer who has lived in Naples for 25 years. He is inspired by the looming presence of Vesuvius in the history of the area.
Mimmo Jodice: Naples intime, (Spring of 2010). The great Neapolitan photographer will present a show as a complement to his retrospective at la Maison Européen de la Photographie.
