Running until Wed 13 Aug at Village Books, a new solo exhibition by renowned photographer Sam Wright vividly captures a heady, heavenly summer in Naples with a collection of saturated images celebrating the magic of the sun-drenched mundane.

Titled The City Of The Sun, the exhibition debuted at Somerset House’s Photo London 2023 and garnered rave reviews, going on to feature in best-of lists by The Guardian, The Times and AnOther.

From gaggles of modish, angular teens on summer break to chestnut-skinned elderly friends playing a sanguine game of cards, Wright’s photos encapsulate the singular Neapolitan spirit in an aesthetic love letter to a city brought to crackling life in the southern Italian heat.

More broadly, The City of The Sun is a paean to the beauty of careful observation. By juxtaposing scenes from the industrial port with the Gulf of Naples and traversing the city’s eclectic topography from urban sanctuaries to the leafy top of Capodimonte, Wright threads a tapestry which embodies a stirring vision of everyday life as lived in one of the world’s most soulful, energetic towns.

The exhibition is the debut publication from New Dimension, an organisation aimed at providing accessible services to galleries and publishers of artist books, and is the first in a three-project collaboration with Sam Wright.

Fri 28 Jul - Sun 13 Aug, Village Books,
131 Oldham St, Manchester M4 1LN

villagebooks.co
Words:
Wolf McFarlane
Published on:
Tue 1 Aug 2023