Antonio Frugis, Roberto Lacarbonara, PINO PASCALI – FOTOGRAFIE, 2018

In 1965, Pino Pascali – working for a long time for Lodolofilm graphic and advertising activity – starts a journey between Naples, Capri and Ischia to make his first photographic reportage, devoted to the production of a commercial for Cirio. The aim of the research was to highlight the peculiarities of the Neapolitan tradition within an exuberant emotional connotation. The journey becomes a real survey of the urban and the harbour landscape, not simply a collection of pictures for a studio montage, but an illuminating encounter with the image.

In this wide sequence of shots there is an all-Italian story, typical of the sixties: there are the many faces portrayed and the shops between the alleys, the great walks in the squares and children’s games in the streets, small boats in ports and large ferries, the palaces redesigning the suburbs and the changing signage.

And there is a society rapidly transforming with intense confidence, in the years of great social and cultural awakening. But it’s not over. In the Naples shots and in the ones taken in Rome (between Campo de’ Fiori and Villa Borghese) Pascali collects numerous “raw data”, useful for sculptural research: quick visual notes, annotations fixed with immediacy, already destined to become plasticity of work of art.

The book is published on the occasion of the homonymous exhibition at the Pino Pascali’s Foundation for the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death.