Claudio Menna: There’s no place like home | MONOVISIONS

MonoVisions Black & White Photo Contest 2024

Naples, Montesanto district.

In the heart of inner city, (actually heritage of UNESCO ) cohabit many different realities. Montesanto is a popular district in the center of the city full of life and activities: there’s a metro station, an Hospital, a college of architecture and a big open air popular market. Walking through it you can smell all the passion and feelings typical of Naples.

Behind the metro Station there’s a big stoned staircase who connect two different areas of the city. In the middle of it, there’s a different reality who coexists there. A big abandoned train depot, occupied since two decades from a little community from all Europe: Spain, Germany, Netherland, France and all the north east Europe. The space is organized as a community with their rules and habits; the most important aspect is the coexistence totally peaceful with the local people, despite the extreme life conditions of the area and its stranger occupants.

Rebels, castoffs, anarchists, zombies, called since ‘90s ‘Squatters’; they live in busied buildings in the centre and suburban areas of the cities. They are not identifiable in one only class of person, a lot of them live in the Squat because they’ve lost everything, job house and their family, others decide to deploy against ‘the Establishment’ who created for decades, with a hammering jarry-buildings, anything but fug and cement.

The Europe of last years runs with a double speed, the first ultrasonic where if you are not conformed you’ll be annulled, and a second speed much more slow, made of economic and social inadeguacy, corporated not by managers and contractors, but families, youngs, couples, Persons whose life is always in balance and in struggle for survival.

Website: claudiomenna.wix.com/photo