Candida Höfer: Napoli

Candida Höfer continues her global project of photographing publicly used interiors in Naples. Commissioned by Museo di Capodimonte she photographed theaters, concert halls, libraries, institutes. Given the city's vast historical and cultural heritage, her pictures of the townhouses and palaces of Naples possess extraordinary aesthetic powers of seduction. Devoid of people, as usual with Hfer's work, the rooms have a solemn and silent beauty that contrasts with the seething life of the city and gives them a new value of testimony. These pictures don't "capture'' the viewer, they are the slow, elabor ate distillation of a supreme moment in which the symmetry, beauty and balance become the definitive hallmark of space.