Eva & Hans-H. Alpers Photography

 
Italy - Naples / 2022 - 2025

Why Naples? We watch the Neapolitans living in their city. The balconies in the Spanish Quarter are both a stage and a box. The residents share their joy of life and their worries with us strangers, with their focus on life. Signs of death everywhere. Pictures of deceased family members in the house altars, bronze skulls next to real ones in the catacombs and tombs. Maybe because the Neapolitans always have to live with the threat of fire coming from the earth? 

The tolerance of the Neapolitans is evident in their acceptance of strangers and those who are different. 

The city's architecture is characterized by the building material 'tuff', a very permeable and crumbling material that can be found everywhere underground. The facades of the houses, churches and palazzi are often protected with construction nets because everything is falling apart. Are these also signs of the internal state of Neapolitan so
ciety, the high unemployment among young people, the lack of opportunities in view of the educational poverty? 

Every day, the rich and beautiful stroll through Via Filangieri and the other boulevards, adorning themselves with new designer handbags and, as always, populating the traditional Gambrinus cafe. And on the busy Via Toledo, the police confiscate the fake designer bags offered by the black sellers.