Francesca Leonardi, ‘O POST MIO, 2020

‘O Post Mio is a photographic work lasted eight years during which Francesca Leonardi followed the life of Claudia who, together with her daughters, occupied a house in the Saracen Park.

Saracen park is located in the Coppola Village, in Castel volturno, near Naples. In the 1960s, when it was built to destroy a rich Mediterranean pine forest, it was the largest illegal urban agglomeration in Europe

Claudia’s life resembles the fate of this pine forest. On her body were poured pours of violence and marginalization that transfigured her life. Her beauty fights against a continuous “crushing” contaminated by poverty and crime. The love for the daughters is a clear attempt at redemption, a way to bury the abuses and reborn a pine forest rich in sap as was the Saracen Park.
The book once opened reveals 2 parts: on the one hand there is a visible binding with 80 color images, on the other, distinct from a lighter paper, there is the text divided into 6 chapters. It’s basically two books in one box.

In the photographic part, expertly edited together with Annalisa D’Angelo, there are the photos of these 8 years interspersed with scans of images of Claudia’s past.
In this way the author tried to merge past and present together, trying to bring out how Claudia’s present, apparently so bizarre and random, was conditioned by her childhood, by her incessant search for a family balance never had. In her stories about the past she sees her present again. Francesca sees her trying to be the mother she never had. Looking for an ideal father for her daughters that life did not give her as a daughter. Along with the photos from the past, there are references from Claudia to her mother. Bringing out these memories about the mother was born a visual game between past and present.

In the part of the text, edited by Elisabetta Galgani and Andrea Milluzzi, there is the story of these 8 years, the dialogues of Claudia with her daughters, the most incredible anecdotes of the life so intense of this woman.