And in these photographs the conscious source of their energy is the essential bond of connecting-the interaction between the photographer and his subjects.” In choosing Italy as his destination and inner-city Naples as a vocation.the photographer's intention was direct and premeditated: to get closer to people and, ultimately, to achieve what Fielding calls 'a quick, collaborative encounter.’ Implying his presence in their gaze, he lets the picture selflessly describe them. “This is a book, then, about people, and only incidentally about place. Elegant, voluptuous, vibrant, it registers joy in life as Fielding photographs limbs, faces, gestures, the bold stare of infants, the withered faces of age, the laughter of children. Even if the accouterments of life in Naples are spartan, the light is triumphantly not. It gilds their disenfranchisement, their dispossession in the ghetto, with a strong sense of energy, tribal power, physicality, self-possession. It has a hallowing glow as it lights his subjects, denizens of the mean streets of Naples, with indigent pride. It preserves a certain formality, even if the camera lens allows little personal space. But at the heart of the book are the photographs themselves.”įrom the essay by Nan Richardson: "A strange light inhabits the photographs of Jed Fielding, a pale gray that one associates with place. Naples itself is beautifully detailed by Shirley Hazzard, who provides a historic and poetic context for Fielding's work.
Fielding's unforgettable portraits are illuminated by an insightful essay contributed by photography writer Nan Richardson. These extraordinary images, the product of twenty years spent photographing in the streets of Naples, constitute a major body of work by an important American photographer. From the Publisher: “ City of Secrets is Jed Fielding's first monograph.
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