Silence is a Gift
Ciro Battiloro
2025 — Southern Italy
About this series
Like a door into their intimacy and captivating simplicity, Silence is a Gift gently celebrates the inhabitants of Southern Italy, a region still scarred by modern tragedies.
Rione Sanità (Naples), Santa Lucia (Cosenza), Torre del Greco. There are places in Southern Italy that carry scars of incurable wounds on the walls and on the flesh of its inhabitants. In those wounds lay the historical memory and the real face of people.
Their names are Alfonso, Elena, Marco, Stefania, to name a few. They have one thing in common: they’ve all met Ciro Battiloro, who has followed them into the intimacy of their home, with his camera and with his heart. He portrayed their everyday life by taking part in it.Never an intruder, Ciro Battiloro is a friend, a brother, and a confident. He doesn’t focus so much on the marginality, but rather on the extraordinary vitality. He has seen new lives being born, children becoming teenagers, and then parents in their turn. He also had to say goodbye.Silence is a Gift is about love and loneliness, life and death, pain and joy but most importantly, about intimacy and resistance. The people portrayed in these photos live in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods, but this is not a social documentary work in the traditional sense. Battiloro has collected a series of photographs that illustrate more abstract concepts, most importantly the need for human connection.
Photographer: Ciro Battiloro
Nationality: Italian
Based in: Naples, Italy
Website: www.cirobattiloro.com
Instagram: @cirobattiloro
Ciro Battiloro (Torre del Greco, 1984) is an italian photorapher based in Napoli. He studied philosophy at “Federico II” University.He uses a very intimate and personal approach and throught everyday life he discusses more general’s social thematics.
From 2015 to 2021 his research is focused on some urban marginalities in South Italy.
From 2022 he started a new long term work on fishermen community in Normandy.
In 2015 he was selected for the 2nd edition of LAB, Irregular Laboratory created by Antonio Biasiucci. He was selected for the artistic residencies: Bocs Art ,Up-Urban People, Tremplin Jeunes talent. His works have been published in several magazines and been exposed in different museum/galleries: Galleria AL Blu di Prussia,Primo Piano di Palazzo Grillo, Galleria Lia Rumma, Galleria del Cembalo, SMMAVE Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, Galerie vom Zufall und vom Glück, Espace Commines and festivals: Planches Contact, Langhe Photofestival, Festival de photo MAP Toulouse, In Cadaques, Helsinki Photo Festival, Cortona on the Move Festival, IMP Festival-International Month of Photojournalism, Calabria photo festival.
His works have received several awards: Langhe Photo Prize, Forum Santa Fe Photography Award, PRIX DU PUBLIC Tremplin Jeunes Talent 2022, Grand Prix MAP / Conseil Départemental de la Haute-Garonne. His book Silence is a Gift was published in 2024 by Chose Commune and was finalist Paris Photo Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2024.