Ferrara: «My snapshot of Maradona made him cry. Michael Santoro? He was fired because of me.”

When did Ferrara start taking photographs?
«At 16, in Piazza Cavour at the Rosolino studio. I became a photographer by chance: one day in via Duomo I met the great Oreste Pipolo with Vito Cerbone and they said to me: “Listen, there’s ‘o nephew of my masto who needs ‘nu guaglione. Are you having a hard time there?”. Since my mom has always put me “toil” and I’ve done a hundred thousand jobs, I go to talk to him and first of all she says to me: “But do you know how to wash the floor?”. I said yes, it was a way to prove myself. She caught me and never let me wash on the floor. There I learned the trade: passport photos, weddings and funeral photos».

The funerals?
«Yes at the time they were made, 18×24 format for the funeral album where everything had to be there, from the deceased to the house, the family members and the music band. I used to shoot with a 6×6 reflex camera that I still have, and I carry those emotions inside me».

And the other professions?
«One of the strangest was as a companion of a truck driver who was carrying vegetables from Naples to Bologna at night: my job was to speak because he shouldn’t fall asleep. Then in the glassworks in Poggioreale, in piazza Carlo III in the cardboard factories, on the “leoncino” trucks as a distributor of gas cylinders, and in a winery in Acerra. Mine was not a poor family, my sister was a seamstress before being hired by the ASL, but my mother wanted me to go to work after school”.

Did you make money with photography?
«When I started being a photographer they gave me 2,000 lire a week. Instead, at Voce della Campania (Maurizio Valenzi’s PCI fortnightly, ed) I took 2,000 lire as a photo. It was a good gym. Michele Santoro also worked there as director who was fired because of one of my covers: it was the shot of a mural in Florence where there was a group of students attacking the police with Molotov cocktails. Valenzi said to him: “Do you think it’s normal that the Communist Party puts up a picture like this?” For Santoro it must have been his luck, after him he made a career ».

She has photographed all the movements. How did it start?
«In ’68-’70 the processions passed from Piazza Cavour, I began to intrigue me and I became a political photographer. I photographed the student and worker movement, the occupied houses and factories, the clashes, the shootings, up to the No global movement of 2000 with which I traveled all over the world and also published two books: Another world is possible and Porto Alegre (Edizioni Intra Moenia)».

On the other hand, what relationship did you have with the newspapers?
«I have worked with all the left-wing newspapers, never with a right-wing one. I had a studio in via Chiatamone opposite the then headquarters of Il Mattino where I went every day in search of news. Ciccio Jovane who had opened the Alpha Press agency taught me a lot, he said to me: you have to look in the little boxes, that’s where the news is. And we actually found them there and went to take pictures for the popular newspapers. Then one day I met the photographer Antonio Troncone in the editorial office of Il Mattino with a Nikon F in his hand, he said to me: “Luciano I’ll give it to you, make it walk”. It’s the camera with which I took the only shot with my back to Maradona».

A photo that has become a myth. How did things go?
«We were told that Maradona would arrive by helicopter and instead he arrived by car, while at the stadium there was a crowd of 60,000 people in the stands to see him. I was among them, and I thought: Maradona is one meter and sixty, if I photograph him from above he becomes one and forty. I can’t reduce a giant like this that Ferlaino paid for 12 billion. Since the exit to the changing rooms was level with the ground, without cover and you could see the players arriving at least 20 meters away, I decided to place myself there, in the centre».

Maradona arrived.
«He climbs the first step with the sole of his foot, the second as well… On the third he puts his toe in front of him and the body automatically spreads his arms. I take a single shot and I’m overjoyed I did because it looks like Maradona is going to heaven. He really looks like a giant. When he came to Naples for the tax issue, I gave him the photo, saying: “Diego, this is your first breath at the San Paolo”. And he was moved. A German gentleman asked me for it in a 1 meter and 36 cm format, beyond which it cannot be printed. Today this picture has entered the collections of all of Europe and the United States. But we are talking about Maradona collectors, not those of art such as photography ».

Here: today you are reopening your own collection.
«The private collection of a photographer is not equal to that of a collector because 90 percent is made up of exchanges of works or gifts between colleagues. I had never put it in view until now because for me it was a personal thing, there are many dedications. However, given that photographic collecting is very fashionable in bourgeois salons, I have made up my mind and “Via Tribunali 138” will become less of a home and more of a permanent gallery».

A way to revive the photography market?
«Yes, but also to give visitors the opportunity to consult an archive built over 50 years and the beautiful library with 2,000 volumes including catalogs that are no longer for sale. The students of the specialist at the Academy of Fine Arts come here to study and for me it is important to always have a social aspect».

Why is it all dedicated to other photographers?
«I dedicate it to my friends, 38 top-level international authors, all in line with my style and engaged in social work. There is also an extraordinary photo of Che Guevara from 1964 that Osvaldo Salas Eustachio Freire gave me in Cuba. We are all free photographers and even when we worked for newspapers, we chose them and not the other way around».

You were the photographer of the femminielli: how do you remember them?
«The adventure with the femminiellis comes from a book, The sign of Virgil by Roberto De Simone where he talks about them. Virgil himself must have been “res e bis”, given that when he lived in Sedil Capuano they called him ‘a reginella. It was twenty years of work, begun in ’79 and finished in 2000, of great mutual respect. I lived in the Spanish Quarters, I saw them and I followed them in my research, which wanted to bring out their femininity. Let’s say I cleared them».

Love life, in the midst of all this political and social commitment?
«Quite busy at the beginning: after all I was sixty-eight, I lived in a commune in the Quartieri and I woke up in the morning not being sure who I was next to me. But there was great respect for the woman, the companions would not have allowed any of them to be subjected to any kind of violence. Those were animated times, occasionally even with searches. The lady downstairs warned us: “Guagliù, come ‘a madam”. The period of the Moro kidnapping was the worst of all. And then no marriage, some important history including the one that lasted years with the mother of my son Francesco whom I raised with hers, Sergio. I have been with the artist Sofia Ferraioli for eight years now, with whom I share not only the new opening but the future: his mosaics are also on display at “Tribunali 138”.

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