Photography as an experience. Light as the guide in the space of architecture
Mario Ferrara
If the photography is the result of a meeting between author and
architecture, then the light, the essence of photography, is the
necessary guide to complete the experience of architecture.
Reading with the look the project of the double hypogeum of the
Cathedral of Caserta by Francesco Venezia means bump into the light and
inevitably being led by it.
The encounter with the first space is refined: the Tent of the
Congregation is revealed to the eye during the way of the staircase
leading to the first hypogeum, the time necessary for the retina to
adapt to the atmosphere of the place of prayer.
The light from the shrine of the covenant invites to get closer; the
time of being completes the familiarity with space, things and matter.
The opening dug out of the tuff by as the Cumana section recalls the rite of passage when crossing it.
At the bottom, the light leads to the place of death, the theological
oxymoron showed by the architecture of the second hypogeum.
From here, the natural light guides us to the opening that leads to the
outer space: "sweet is the light and the eyes like to see the sun"
(Qohelet, Ecclesiaste 11-7).