The Riccardo Carbone Photo Archive includes about 500.000 negatives and thousands of prints and glass plates, shot in Naples between the 20s and the 70s of last century.

Riccardo Carbone, the first photojournalist in Naples, narrated his city for over 50 years: the artistic treasures and the great urban mutations, the daily life, the sports, the Neapolitan song, the world of fishermen, the cruise ships and the celebrities, the departure of emigrants, the dives of rascals, the coastal storms, the parties and much more.

An entire worlds encased in many small cardboard boxes, tidily numbered and lined up on the shelves, containing glass plates, prints, rolls and countless film bags, each marked with the title of the photographic report, handwritten through an elegant “old-style” calligraphy. This is how the Archive introduces itself: many small boxes with great memories inside. Opening up these boxes is like discovering a world: a whole age unfolding before our eyes; one would never get tired of leafing through this myriad of snap-shots, sometimes fortuitous, capturing defining moments of our history.

Riccardo bequeathed all of us a magic and still unexplored place, a trip through time, looks, emotions, often in places that do not exist anymore.

This is a heritage of priceless value, of everybody and for everybody, which is dying, unfortunately. The negatives are undergoing decaying processes due to environmental factors, which are slow but constant.

We, the Riccardo Carbone Association, dream of creating an on-line catalogue, open to everybody. The work has already started, on voluntary basis: we started by ourselves, with a scanner and a computer, digitalize and classify pictures according to international standards.

However, we are fighting time and sometimes it’s too late….

Therefore, we decided to ask for help to those who love Naples, to those who love history, to those who love memory.

We have to safeguard the archive and to buy new boxes to protect glass plates and negatives. We need new and more potent scanners. We need your help.

With your help, no matter how much you will give, all together we will fulfill a little miracle!

Who said dreaming is possible only when your eyes are shut? Children daydream and we, like them, want to keep dreaming…

You can support this project even by talking to your friends about it or sharing the video on your facebook page or twitter!

Thank you!

Riccardo Carbone Association was established in 2015 in order to preserve the archive and to make it available online for free consultation.

Works on the archive have already started on voluntary basis, with digitalization and classification according to international standards. At the same time, we are working on the safeguard of all the assets, through the implementation of conservation and damage prevention strategies.