SANITà

  • Dates
    2015 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Topics Portrait, Documentary, Social Issues
  • Location Napoli, Italy

My project focuses on the Rione Sanità’s life in its intimate fold. The Sanità district, situated in the heart of Napoli (an Italian metropolis), is one of Europe’s most densely populated places.

The “Rione Sanità” is solitude and love, irony and tragedy, faith and sin. The contrasts generate surreal existences. The street and the house

merge together, the private becomes public and the public hides the secrets of the private. Silence is a rare gift for these alleys, but in its

revelation you rediscover the naked and immense soul of a forgotten humanity. My project focuses on the Rione’s life in its intimate and

sweet fold.

My images want to give back the best part of that flesh that can also be bestial.

The “Rione Sanità” was built in the 16th century, in a quarry used as a burial place during the Greco-Roman period. The strong link

between inhabitants and death is one of the distinctive features of the district. The district, born as a residence place for noble and aristocratic

families, has become one of the poorest in Naples due to the construction of the “Ponte Sanità” (later called “Ponte Maddalena

Cerasuolo”). The bridge, built by the French between 1806 and 1809 and created to connect the Royal Palace of Capodimonte to the rest

of the city, has excluded the neighborhood from the life of the latter. The “Rione Sanità” is developed in a depression: it is an urban reality

in itself, which is not necessary to cross to move from one side of the city to another. This isolation, exacerbated by lack of integration and

development policies, has led to the proliferation of various social problems such as unemployment, school drop-outs, presence of criminal

organizations.At the same time, the district has retained its identity. Among the inhabitants of the “Rione Sanità” has grown a strong

sense of belonging only scratched on the surface by modernity. The district welcomes a vast humanity with different geographical origins

and different personal stories. This diversity is a wealth. There is not only marginality, but also an extraordinary vitality.

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