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TO LIVE AND DIE IN NAPLES - PART 115 Years of Pictures from Italy's Crime Capital
INTERVIEW BY TIM SMALL
See all articles by this contributorPHOTOS BY MARIO SPADA 
Mario Spada is a photographer from Naples. In 1986, he started to work in his hometown as a photographer’s assistant for an agency that organized wedding pictures. From 1993 onward he documented various parts of life in Naples, from kids in the projects of the Quartieri Spagnoli to microcriminality and street dealers; from soccer hooligans to dogfighting to the Mafia wars of Scampìa. His pictures have since appeared regularly in Italian and international magazines such as Der Spiegel, Libération, L’espresso, and El Mundo. Every project he finished would end up in a metaphoric drawer, to which he’d add other projects in other drawers, until he had to buy a whole new filing cabinet altogether (still speaking metaphorically here, if you’re keeping track), when he found himself with what amounts to a photographic enyclopedia of the last 15 years of life in Napoli. These are the same 15 years that have seen around 2,000 murders linked to the Camorra. Sooner or later, Mario’s pictures will become a gorgeous, powerful art book that you’ll be able to leaf through and impress your friends with, but for now, we decided to publish some of our favorite pictures of his and ask him a couple of questions about his work and his city. Vice: What made you begin to photograph your city so compulsively? Normally photojournalists spend their time travelling to Burma and Nigeria and Nicaragua and other exotic, dangerous places. Mario Spada: From the beginning, I have always been interested in documenting my reality. I am very attached to Naples, and the fact that I already knew how to move around here and who to speak to was a good starting point. Another reason was that I just couldn’t afford to leave. And anyway, I have always had it in mind to do a project like the great photojournalists of the golden age, who only documented one place, observing it and watching it change over the years. Like Francesco Paolo Cito. His work on Naples in the 80s is incredible. What was your first specific assignment? I don’t think I began with one particular idea. It started as just a series of pictures. Then I narrowed it down to the Quartieri Spagnoli, Naples’s most infamous neighborhood, and other areas that had a similar feel. Then I started to focus on the women who lived inside these hoods, busying themselves with contraband and drug dealing and other criminal activities. This was in 1995. How hard was it to get access to this world? It was very easy. The first time I went in with my camera, the women started clapping their hands, shouting at each other, “The photographer’s here! The photographer!” They were happy that there was a boy shooting them. Then some of them did start to ask what I was going to do with the pictures, and I had to calm them down. It’s always like this. They give themselves, and then they pull back. My subjects are all naturally vain. But how did you gain their trust? I mean, almost all your subjects are criminals. Well, the fact that I worked as a photographer’s assistant at weddings helped. Many of the weddings we shot were in these neighborhoods, for many, many years, and that helped a lot. The people gradually came to know me. In Scampìa, or other projects, you have to know people, you have to know how to treat them. It’s always a question of talking to people and gaining their respect. But these neighborhoods aren’t that different from the rest of Naples—in the way of dealing with people—or from most of Southern Italy, for that matter. You have to show a certain hardness at all times. CONTINUED TO LIVE AND DIE IN NAPLES | 1 | 2 | 3 |
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