Napoli Photography Series

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Napoli Photography Series

Type

Photography Series

Year

2019

Location

Italy

Under ground, under lava: suspended stories. Napoli Photography Series

Traveling to southern Italy means approaching the beating heart of the Mediterranean. In Naples, every street vibrates with centuries of history, lava, and life. Deep within the city we enter the underground Naples: a hidden world where ancient Greeks built cisterns to store water, later used as air-raid shelters during the Second World War. A labyrinth beneath the surface where silence holds what cannot be forgotten.

We did not reach Pompeii, but we visited Herculaneum, and it was a revelation. Much smaller, yes, but infinitely more intimate and better preserved. Its houses still retain colors, furniture, mosaics — life, suspended.

Walking through Herculaneum feels like entering a frozen private party. Frescoes still decorate walls from taverns to public baths, alongside mosaics depicting scenes ranging from everyday life to erotic imagery.

Herculaneum, like Pompeii, was buried in 79 AD by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Unlike Pompeii, which was covered by a thick layer of dry ash, Herculaneum was submerged under a flow of volcanic mud and debris, preserving it with extraordinary integrity — as if time had frozen in a single instant.

Pompeii is more famous, but Herculaneum is its lesser-known sister, offering a brutally intimate preservation of daily life. Its houses still retain wooden furniture, utensils, even almost intact food remains. In Pompeii, only plaster casts of human bodies remain; here, domestic life survives almost fully intact — as if people had stepped out to buy bread and never returned.

The details reveal far more than political history or grand events: they expose daily life, domestic chaos, excess, and the banality of a society that, like ours, was neither perfect nor morally elevated.

Fascinating and terrifying at once: a prosperous city full of life and plans that vanished in a single moment beneath mud and death. It is a brutal blow to human ego. There is no escape from history, nor from oblivion.

A 2nd-century BC bronze bust found in Pompeii, in the arcades of the Sanctuary of Apollo, in 1817.
Naples, National Archaeological Museum.

A Roman fresco from Pompeii, likely depicting a crowned woman associated with mythological or allegorical figures — possibly a muse, goddess (such as Ariadne or Flora), or an androgynous representation of Bacchus, or a personification of art, poetry, or triumph.
Such frescoes were common in elite Roman domus. The painting belongs to the Fourth Pompeian Style (1st century AD).
Naples, National Archaeological Museum.

A marble sculpture depicting the Titan Atlas, condemned to hold the sky upon his shoulders. The celestial globe he carries includes 41 of the 48 constellations described by Ptolemy, making it the oldest surviving sculptural representation of Atlas and a key astronomical document of antiquity. This work merges Greek mythology with ancient astronomical knowledge.
Naples, National Archaeological Museum.

Bronze equestrian sculpture attributed to Donatello from the Renaissance.
The piece is named after Diomede Carafa and previously belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici. The head formed part of a large unfinished equestrian monument.
Naples, National Archaeological Museum.

A marble bust depicting Zeus with attributes of the Egyptian god Amun, such as ram horns. It was found in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum and is a copy of a 5th-century BC prototype.
Naples, National Archaeological Museum.

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