the interview
NoonDecember 24, 2022 – 08:42
De Filippo’s still photographer, author of extraordinary shots also of Lucio Amelio and Andy Warhol, today teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples: «I have 300,000 photographs in my archive»
Of Ida Palisi
«My whole life is based on experimentation in a global sense: not photographic but existential». He calls himself a “culture reporter” Fabio Donato, Eduardo De Filippo’s still photographer and author of extraordinary shots of Lucio Amelio, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, who went through half a century of history with the camera. Passing from the years of the cultural revolution to those of globalization, photographing urban poverty, environmental disasters, migrants, Donato has witnessed the changes of our time through images, always intending art as an instrument of knowledge of society. We owe him the creation of the first degree course in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, where he still follows the students, despite his 75 years and his retirement. We meet him in the house-studio in the historic centre: here he keeps an archive of 300,000 shots, studies new projects and surrounds himself with books and contemporary art paintings.
Donato, which image do you remember most about Eduardo?
«That of a lonely man whom I photographed from behind, sitting in the center of the courtyard at the Maschio Angioino watching his company perform. On the stairs was his son Luca standing and looking at his father. It was a meeting of solitudes but, on the other hand, being a photographer is the loneliest job in the world. It’s photography that makes you alone.”
When did you start photography?
«While I was attending classical high school, I painted, played the double bass in a band, wrote poetry and had a hobby of photography. I was good: I won both poetry and photo contests. Then when I enrolled in Architecture I took pictures of friends and painters and it became a passion and my language».
Did he give it all away?
«Yes, after a trip to India in 1970 by car with six friends, we crossed Europe and Asia, it took us a month and a half to get to New Delhi. Once there we parted ways. It was supposed to be just a trip to find myself, I stayed there for seven months».
Why India?
«I am a sixty-eight year old, one of those who had really believed in the revolution which in the end never took place. I chose India because it had been the destination of all my cultural references: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Pasolini and the Beatles. I was 23 years old, I went there and stayed there until I realized I was Western: with an eye on Zen, but always a Westerner».
What does it mean?
«A person in the middle, between spirituality but with his feet on the ground. Someone who believed in the revolution from below. I have been to an ashram and escaped. To change the world concretely, I couldn’t shut myself up in places like a Tibetan monastery. So I returned, abandoned my studies and decided to devote myself body and soul to photography».
And how did photography change the world?
«We didn’t change but the images have the strength to denounce the great social dramas. The photo of the feet of Indian teenagers now exhibited at the Naples Metro Museum still shows itself with its evocative power of an ever more topical gap between well-being and poverty».
So when you came back did you turn to social photography?
«No, to photography tout court with a ten-year studio in Città della Scienza. Then I fell in love with the students, after saying no to the Academy several times. I entered and I never left».
He also told the story of the imprisoned boys in images.
«I was in juvenile prisons throughout Campania for a year: the result is a catalog of images full of bars and existential annulment. The imprisoned boys are alone and without identity. There are no suitable words to explain, the images are more effective».
Did your interest then shift to art?
«I dedicated my true commitment to the world of theater and creativity. I worked with the Living Theater and all the theatrical avant-gardes of the 60s and 70s, I was the photographer of Lucio Amelio as well as Eduardo as well as I then observed in my shots the early works of Servillo and Martone, which today contribute to the international cultural production. Over the years, encounters with personalities like them have testified to the cultural ferment of our city».
Which of the many is he most attached to?
«To the shots with the German artist Joseph Beuys who I met with Amelio in Dusseldorf in the academy where he taught. We spent some days in Capri with his family, Beuys while planting trees said: we are the revolution. There was harmony, there were moments of strong political and social sharing. The photographs were an opportunity for knowledge and comparison».
And the Living Theater?
«He revolutionized theatrical languages, the interaction between actors on stage and the audience in the stalls which became a single language of the show, he laid the foundations for a new social paradigm of art. He paved the way for digital media, social media, the selfie, the spontaneous and messy approach of all media that characterizes the era of digital transition today”.
Today it trains young creatives.
«Yes, when I was 45 I gave up commercial photography and invented the first photography degree, where teaching went hand in hand with social and existential exploration. I would like my students to question themselves not only about how photos are taken but also about creativity at a time when the digital dimension and sharing prevail in photography».
What does he do with his huge photographic archive?
«With Irene Manco and the “Papaveri e Farfalle” association that deals with art, I make it available every day to my young photography students, scholars, directors, all those with whom to deepen this new era, this new transition social, cultural and technological”.
No room for sentimental life, is the artist alone?
«I have been married three times, I have a seventeen year old daughter, Stella. I practice looking at the world with her eyes and, thus, with the eyes of the new generation, to mature new common paths ».
The future?
“He’s in the culture industry. Eight billion people produce two-three billion photos a day: we need to think about how culture is spread and have reference models for its production. I would like a group of students to elaborate a project at the end of this academic year to propose to the Municipality of Naples».
With what goal?
«Create new opportunities for young artists so that they can express their ideas and proposals through paths of democratic participation in the programs of our administration. This starts from the international table on cultural and creative industry models promoted by the city council. The challenge is to keep photographing reality».
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December 24, 2022 | 08:42
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