Cesare Accetta's 'Drama' and 'Memini' at Al Blu di Prussia, Naples

After eight years, photographer and light designer Cesare Accetta (Naples, 1954) returns to exhibit in his hometown at Galleria Al Blu di Prussia. The show, curated by Maria Savarese, presents two series: 'Drama' and 'Memini'. In 'Drama', Accetta integrates his experience as a stage photographer, light designer, and director of photography (including work with Mario Martone) to restore the proxemics of theater. He gave minimal directorial inputs to actresses, asking them to tune into emotional moods while acting spontaneously, then photographed their expressions with close-up realism. The resulting portraits evoke empathic relational pieces. The first photographs, accompanied by a video with suggestions of Bob Wilson or Bill Viola, explore how movement, time, and light in a Caravaggesque darkness alter vision to reveal authentic emotional cores. The complementary series 'Memini' shifts from the recognizable to the almost informal, using subject and camera movement to create light filaments that dematerialize the subject, recalling works by Segantini or Gerhard Richter. The polarity between static, realistic darkness and abstract color scratches is highlighted by Savarese's curatorial project, which exploits ambient reflections and spatial arrangement. Accetta's images bring photography to Tarkovsky's definition of cinema as sculpting time, caressing the mystery of self and other with a labyrinth of a thousand lights.