DIOPAZZO is a visual dialogue between an institutional archive belonging to an historical psychiatric hospital of Naples and a photographic archive that documents the last “guests” of the same hospital, its archive and its now abandoned pavilions. The dialogue is revealed through the editing, reworking, reframing and overlay of images and documents from the past, in search of new connections and meanings. A poetic dialogue, not descriptive but rather evocative of a moltitude of stories trapped and forgotten in piles of paper.
The project developed in different phases and approaches, in summary:
1998 I obtained permission to photograph inside “Leonardo Bianchi” Psychiatric Hospital, in Naples, Italy. At that time the last 300 “guests” were waiting to be transferred to smaller facilities located throughout the territory. They were free to leave the asylum, but in fact they remained inside, accustomed for years or decades to life within the hospital walls.
At my request I was allowed to sleep and live inside the hospital for weeks. I worked in black and white film in medium and small format with a documentary approach.
1999/2017 the project disappeared into a drawer and was never published; only about ten of the first b&w images were projected in Arles in 1999. The thought of not having given back enough with my work and the desire to continue the project never abandon me during these years.
2018 I photographed the hospital pavilions now empty and invaded by vegetation. I worked on medium format color film with a documentary approach. I later used most of these images in negative.
2021/2022 I was allowed to return to work on the hospital archive. The archive, abandoned and now in critical condition, includes 70,000 medical records of as many patients and covers a span of about a century of psychiatric documents and practices. During this period I went to Naples several times and just as many times I got lost in the immensity and variety of stories hidden among the piles of paper. I brought a scanner with me and I started scanning documents and photographs initially in a neutral way and then gradually intervened in the scanning phase using the same papers, documents, letters, photographs, registers and other contents from the archive itself, to produce new images.
2023/2024 editing of the various contents both visual and textual, search for connections and dialogues between images. Creation of new images from existing images. Creation of a first hand made book dummy.
Pinhole self-made camera exposure on analog photo paper
The project developed in different phases and approaches, in summary:
1998 I obtained permission to photograph inside “Leonardo Bianchi” Psychiatric Hospital, in Naples, Italy. At that time the last 300 “guests” were waiting to be transferred to smaller facilities located throughout the territory. They were free to leave the asylum, but in fact they remained inside, accustomed for years or decades to life within the hospital walls.
At my request I was allowed to sleep and live inside the hospital for weeks. I worked in black and white film in medium and small format with a documentary approach.
1999/2017 the project disappeared into a drawer and was never published; only about ten of the first b&w images were projected in Arles in 1999. The thought of not having given back enough with my work and the desire to continue the project never abandon me during these years.
2018 I photographed the hospital pavilions now empty and invaded by vegetation. I worked on medium format color film with a documentary approach. I later used most of these images in negative.
2021/2022 I was allowed to return to work on the hospital archive. The archive, abandoned and now in critical condition, includes 70,000 medical records of as many patients and covers a span of about a century of psychiatric documents and practices. During this period I went to Naples several times and just as many times I got lost in the immensity and variety of stories hidden among the piles of paper. I brought a scanner with me and I started scanning documents and photographs initially in a neutral way and then gradually intervened in the scanning phase using the same papers, documents, letters, photographs, registers and other contents from the archive itself, to produce new images.
2023/2024 editing of the various contents both visual and textual, search for connections and dialogues between images. Creation of new images from existing images. Creation of a first hand made book dummy.
Pinhole self-made camera exposure on analog photo paper