Few cities in the world can be identified with an element of nature as Naples is completely identified with Vesuvius. The city itself is a sort of amphitheater built around the majestic volcano.

The exhibition presents 37 large works by the photographer and visual artist Mario Amura who for over 12 years has immortalized in real photographic paintings the fireworks celebration that the Neapolitan people stage around Vesuvius on New Year's Eve.

The works, photographs which have not undergone any graphic manipulation, will be hosted in the Cellaio room in the Real Bosco which for the occasion has been completely isolated from natural light and immersed in a red light which recalls the red of the volcano's magma chamber and the luminous atmosphere of the darkroom in which film photographs were once developed. The exhibition project is signed by the architect Lucio Turchetta .

 “ The Neapolitans, on New Year's Eve, exorcise the fear that the volcano will erupt, making the entire Gulf of Naples explode with light and colours ” says Mario Amura : “Every year, on December 31st, I go up with a troupe made up of some of my dearest friends on Monte Faito, the mountain that stands out on the Gulf of Naples with Vesuvius in front. From there we capture this sort of exorcism against the inhuman forces of the volcano, of destiny. The result, despite being, in fact, a work of photographic reportage, is extraordinarily pictorial: the fireworks become nebulae, animals, star landscapes.”

In Amura's photographs the iconographic imagery of the symbol of Naples is subverted: while the Vesuvius of the gouaches and masterpieces of Turner, Marlow, Volaire, Warhol is colored by the lava that floods it in Naples Explosion, on the contrary, Vesuvius appears as a silent shadow submerged by the explosion of the fires of the New Year celebrations.