by Teresa ManciniIl visual artist Mario A
The visual artist Mario Amura recounts his Napoli Explosion project, inspired by the fireworks surrounding Vesuvius on New Year’s Eve: “a handful of minutes to capture the essence of what is happening and to tell its story.” An unpredictable adventure. Between art and reportage.
Mario Amura Captures the Fireworks Explosion on New Year’s Eve from Mount Faito
The oldest depiction of Vesuvius is two thousand years old. It once adorned the wall of an ancient Pompeian residence, the House of the Centenary, and today it is preserved at the Mann, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The volcano is painted as a gentle conical hill, adorned with chestnut trees and flourishing vineyards, oblivious to the days of fire and ash of 79 A.D. that would forever imprint universal memory, transforming it into a powerful symbol, both feared and celebrated by the community that gathers around it. In the views of Turner, Marlow, Voltaire, and Warhol it is colored with incandescent lava. But in Napoli Explosion, Mario Amura’s photographic project, Vesuvius reveals itself differently: it is an unmoving guardian that seems to silently observe an explosion of light, this time generated by humans. “Every day, from the window of my room, my childlike gaze rested upon that imposing presence, capable of instilling respect and nurturing wonder,” begins Amura, a photographer, director of photography, and visual artist who grew up in Torre Annunziata, in a house overlooking the volcano. The Mountain would, unsurprisingly, become the setting for one of his future artistic explorations, intertwining with a career that spans theater and cinema, where he has “illuminated” the sets of directors such as Luca Guadagnino, Paolo Sorrentino, Saverio Costanzo, and Vincenzo Marra.
The Fireworks and the Bangs: A Way to Exorcise an Ancestral Fear
Mario Amura, photographer, director of photography, and visual artist.
Mario Amura, photographer, director of photography, and visual artist. But let’s return to that irresistible call: “After years away from Naples, in 2006 I decided to spend New Year’s Eve on Vesuvius with some friends. While I was taking photos among the ancient pines, I saw the fireworks burst in the distance,” he recounts. It is a revelatory moment, an opportunity to question the symbolic link between that threatening presence and the pyrotechnic rituals: “Perhaps the Neapolitan people have transformed fireworks into a way to exorcise an ancestral fear, I tell myself,” he adds.
This insight becomes an anthropological research: “Elsewhere, fireworks are shows orchestrated by pyrotechnic masters for the public – he continues – Here, instead, they are a firsthand experience that becomes a collective rite.”
The Fireworks Captured from Mount Faito
In 2010, Amura changed his perspective, moving to Mount Faito: from there on New Year’s Eve Vesuvius appears enveloped in luminous explosions: “I understood that a project could be born, an unusual visual narrative,” he explains.
Since then, every December 31 he returns to the summit overlooking the Bay of Naples with his dearest friends, historians, philosophers, intellectuals who have become his travel companions: they form the Napoli Explosion crew, following his directions like those of a conductor: “to capture this unique spectacle with the lenses of our cameras. We will wait for midnight on Faito again this year,” he anticipates.
A Symbolic Explosion That Reflects the Great Contemporary Fears
The images that come to life overturn the classical iconography of an erupting Vesuvius: here the volcano remains silent, a spectator and a backdrop to a luminous celebration. It appears as a mute, jewel-encrusted giant. Those shots, vibrant with glows and color, seem like paintings.
The work “Napex 7303222”, from 2017, immortalizes the icon of Naples, the Vesuvius volcano submerged in the explosion of fireworks celebrating New Year’s Eve.
From a personal, almost secret narrative, the work that Mario Amura has been cultivating over 13 years “evolving over time, in search of the feeling of light” has been noticed, captivating art critics and inaugurating a public dimension: thirty-seven large-scale works, mounted on lightboxes, were presented in recent months at the Capodimonte Museum, with one of them becoming part of the permanent collection.
“Amura’s technique is extraordinary: he captures a symbolic explosion that reflects the great contemporary fears,” wrote Sylvain Bellenger, curator of the exhibition, who chose this show as one of the last projects of his mandate leading the Museum and Real Bosco.
Another painting is visible in the spaces of the Pio Monte della Misericordia, in the heart of Naples’ historic center, where one can admire Caravaggio’s celebrated masterpiece, The Seven Works of Mercy.
A Handful of Minutes to Tell the Whole Essence
The fireworks that surround the volcano, captured in the shots, sometimes become nebulous shapes, or animals, starry landscapes, marine backgrounds. But Amura’s material is not a narrative constructed on a script, nor is there any graphic elaboration of the images. It remains, in every respect, a reportage: “We only have a handful of minutes a year to capture the essence of what is happening and to tell its story. An unrepeatable, real occasion, tied to the here and now,” clarifies the creator of Napoli Explosion.
“It is a creation distant from the gestural abstraction of an author like Pollock, whose splashes on canvas follow gravity – he adds – Each firework, however, creates a trace that reflects not only the light in the sky but also the intention and the hand that guided it.” Behind every gesture, who knows, there may be joy, irony, fear, hope for the new year to come.
“Napoli Explosion Is an Ode to the City”
Salvatore Settis, archaeologist and art historian, president of the Louvre’s Scientific Council, has written that Napoli Explosion is “an ode to the city,” because it presents “a pictorial-photographic work that prodigiously unfolds, faithful to the rules of reportage.” And it is for this reason that, this year, the professor will join with the enthusiasm of the scholar in the artistic reportage experience on Mount Faito.
Napex 22318. Mario Amura 2022. Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte Collection.
The “Candid Photography” Inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson
Mario Amura also recounts having been inspired by the “candid photography” of a master like Henri Cartier-Bresson, whom he met when he was a boy: “The photographer must be invisible, respectful, an observer who does not interfere,” he emphasizes. Even Amura’s past as a director of photography was fundamental in this regard: “Cinema taught me to see the world through the eyes of others. A lesson learned from Giuseppe Rotunno, my teacher at the Experimental Center of Cinematography, of whom I later became an assistant.”
Amura’s Projects
Although the direction of lights no longer fascinates him, Mario Amura confesses: “I would like to return to cinema, but as a director.” There is so much material, however, that he is working on. Since 2005, with the advent of digital photography, he has begun to explore new languages, merging photography and cinema to tell the invisible: “I have developed the idea of narrating emotional flows through photographic sequences, a sort of ‘contemporary photo novel’ – he explains – images that capture fragments of reality, synchronized with music, where I merge two opposite concepts: photography that suspends the moment and cinema that lets it flow.”
For the project StopEmotion, still unpublished, he gathered images from Bosnia, India, China, France, England, and Cambodia, while since 2007 he has been working on Fujenti, an original reportage built over time and still in progress.
And if among the places with a special energy Amura unhesitatingly mentions the Bagnoli Pier, “a seaside promenade, a nearly one-kilometer walk suspended between sky and water,” here we are ready to move once again to Vesuvius to capture one last suggestion: “When I first took my daughter to the foot of the volcano, she was four years old – today she is eight – I said to her: ‘Look, Lea, this is Vesuvius; it carries within it fire, lava,’ trying to describe it between myth and legend. A few days later, I told her again: ‘Here, Lea, Vesuvius, say hello to it.’ And she, with the innocence and simplicity of a child, replied: ‘Yes, let’s say hello, but in a soft voice.’ Those words struck me more than a thousand theories: the volcano is not just a mountain, but a living presence that immediately inspires reverence. And it reminds us of our deep bond with nature and with the universe.”
