In retrospect, I owe Diego Maradona a great deal; without him, I would not have had the provenance of a career starting all the way back to that extraordinary World Cup in Mexico in 1986 which he owned, both metaphorically and literally. I got lucky on the day of the final and the photograph of him, arms aloft with the trophy, remains one of the most important of my life. But Neapolitans had gotten even luckier when their debt-ridden club bought Diego Maradona from Barcelona in the summer of 1984. It was an enormous financial gamble for a club teetering on insolvency and history now looks back fondly on the courage of the owner Corrado Ferlaino. It is impossible to overstate the importance of Maradona to the city - no sportsman has ever offered such level of redemption and hope to an otherwise disadvantaged community and when Maradona’s Napoli won the Italian title in 1987, his legacy was secure. To this day, many Neapolitans have two paintings above their bed - Jesus Christ and Maradona. It was an intoxicating love affair between man and city masterfully articulated in the Asif Kapadia 2019 documentary “Maradona”, which briefly features my photograph from 1986. For a generation now, the giant murals of Maradona, dotted around Naples and the neighbouring towns, have become tourist destinations in themselves. They are part of the aesthetic fabric of this most magical and raw part of Europe. Diego was so much more than just a sportsman; he was a modern-day saviour in this god- fearing and deeply spiritual place.
My idea was to use a Maradona mural as a background layer in a celebration of life in the wider Naples area. The styling and props were necessarily skewed towards the time when Maradona still played for Napoli, and I sensed the need for a busy street narrative. I wanted to evoke a very definite sense of place. There is nowhere quite like it in the world.