Mattettunin

A contraction of the words costume and play, the Cosplay phenomenon originated in Japan and quickly spread to the rest of the world, giving body to characters from Japanese manga and anime, films and role-playing games.

The Mattettunin photographic project was launched in 2004 by Carmine Mauro Daprile as a result of the author's fascination with the imagery of advertising, video games and cartoons as a virtual territory for training survival in real social contexts and homologation to dominant values.
At first, the author approaches the Cosplayers with a gaze that denotes extraneousness. But then changes his approach during the work, manifesting a desire to play with the visions of the characters portrayed to construct another, credible reality, which is crystallized in the single shots.
The choice of locations favours a cinematographic gaze that focuses on the suburban landscape and the suburbs, casting the fantasies in real-life everyday contexts, giving shape to a narration in images that unfolds through the pages of the book, becoming a metaphor for personal and collective dramas.