The Luzzatti district, which has been planned and built between the 1920s and the 1960s, is located in Naples’ suburbs, close to the Central Station. It is the setting for Elena Ferrante’s tetralogy ”My brilliant friend”. This district is filled with an exaggerate amount of desires, brutality and feelings and it becomes both test and representation of the contradictions of the latest Western history in the novel’s pages.
The reportage, which was shot in 2016, shows what remains of the economic boom dreams: the old and new buildings’ modest shape, the still dusty streets, the locals’ life. Therefore, the reader can identify himself and his life experiences in the rione’s everyday life. The “napoletanità” (the typical way of being of Naples) in the district (like the Vesuvius opposite profiles and the skyscrapers of the Administrative Centre, dominating the horizon, the hanging laundry, the fruit seller with his little truck) is almost imperceptible but it still leads us to the conclusion that, even in such a specific place like Naples one finds the same relationships and the same contradictions of the suburbs in Paris, Berlin or Detroit.
Ottavio Sellitti is an Italian photographer living and working between Naples, Berlin and Southern France.
Before the vernissage, the Institute will host the conference ”Ferrante Fever and the Neapolitan Quartet: four reasons of a glocal success”, held by Tiziana de Rogatis, associate professor at Università per Stranieri di Siena, with a speech by Cecilia Schwartz, associate professor in Italian at the Stockholm University, who will present an introduction of the great success of Elena Ferrante in Sweden.