Capri inno all'estate

PREFACE BY Vittorio Sgarbi

We have an idea of Capri which doesn’t correspond with the reality of Capri; and Miss Severi doesn’t want her photographs to reproduce anything at all, but rather that they simply serve as present and past equivalents of our memory, our sensations.
Capri is an emotion, a shimmer, an impression, a fleeting photograph that doesn’t focus on a particular place or reproduce a particular moment, but rather the mood generated by losing one’s senses, a sort of numbness. Like someone who suddenly wakes up and only remembers a fragment of a dream, not recalling the meaning or the story line. One has been immersed in a story, one has experienced a moment of intoxication and one was on Capri, far from home, in order to see and experience new emotions. These emotions reside within us. When remembering them we are not fully aware, as we rather operate more on an intuitive level. Maria Pia Severi wants to provide us with a photographic document of this experi-ence, this dimension. Her technique thus appears to draw from Impressionism and Pointil-lism, like the transcription of a dream.
She blurs the focus when dealing with distances, foregoing the sort of clarity associated with photography. It is this original endeavour that characterizes the work of Maria Pia Severi.
Vittorio Sgarbi

 

 

PREFACE BY Carlo Contini

Even though the publication of another book about Capri, not even two years after the first one, “Emozioni capresi – Inverno”, (Impressions of Capri – Winter) might seem a little par-adoxical at first glance, arousing the suspicion of a déja vu experience, with her “Capri – Inno all’estate” (Capri – A Hymn to Summer) Miss Severi manages to surprises us once again with a book that is completely different from the first one. If in the first volume we are presented with an array of winding streets and interesting places off the beaten path taken by the usual hordes of tourists, scenes dominated by the delicate, suffused tones that characterize winter, in the current volume, by means of her photos, the artist thrusts us headlong into the colourful bustle of the Capri summer, focusing her lens primarily on the women who populate the island, be they native inhabitants or just tourists passing through.

As a matter of fact the artist’s main concern is with women, be they clad in plain housedresses or fancy, gaudy outfits or even skimpy little bikinis. Whether venturing forth into the historic piazzetta, via Tragara or via Camerelle, the artist’s curious eye manages to regale us to a colourful, youthful image of the microcosm of Capri, also sneaking us into the inner sanctums of the most famous boutiques where ladies are shopping for that spe-cial dress or two-piece swimsuit.
Carlo Contini