"Due cuori e una capanna" exhibition in Naples

From 12 June to 14 September 2025, the Gallerie d'Italia - Naples presents “Due cuori e una capanna” (Two Hearts and a Hut), the photographic project with which Daniele Ratti explores the link between great love stories and the architecture that hosted them. This Italian expression has become part of our everyday language over the years, as an informal indication of the harmony between two people who love each other, in a shared space, wherever that may be, a bit like the English “Home is where the heart is”.

The artist’s reflection is inspired by the history of architecture, in which the hut is the symbol of a primitive dwelling, a primordial shelter in which to take refuge against the adversities of nature and a model remembered by architects as the archetype of the first house.

The two matrices made up of family intimacy and architectural design, represent the starting point for a journey, which began in 2020 and ended in 2024, among dwellings with extraordinary design features and also considered extraordinary by the couples who chose them as their home, building a memory in them that Daniele Ratti's photography succeeded in capturing and narrating.

The exhibition offers visitors the key to enter private homes, revealing light and shade, rooms and details, projects and thoughts, that unfold within the domestic walls, where the stories and feelings of those who inhabited them have always been preserved. In an exhibition of 42 photographs - chosen from a large body of production as the images most representative of the project - Daniele Ratti's intimate gaze takes visitors on an unprecedented journey through the spaces of historical residences and modern or contemporary architecture, some well known and others less so, in which love stories unfold, bearing witness to the bonds that tie them to those places and not to others.

The itinerary will be introduced by a text penned by the curator, Benedetta Donato, and by the author's biography.  Through the photographs and in-depth texts, it will be possible to discover different and hidden corners of each home, shot from original points of view, to trace those details that represent the architectural extension  of stories and feelings.

Thanks to the author's perspective, locations, architecture, furnishings and objects become tangible yet evocative signs, capable of conveying atmospheres and experiences, of transcending time and presenting as visible something that by its very nature, is not. A singular research that delivers snapshots of precious memories in the form of a visual narrative.

Daniele Ratti (Milan, 1974), lives and works in Turin.
After graduating in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Turin, he has been working in photography since 2000. His first solo career was in 2004. The author’s path is flanked by curatorial activities, among which we remember the artistic direction of Paratissima in Turin.
He exhibited during EXPO 2015 in Milan and at the Gallerie d'Italia in Milan, as part of a project curated by Mario Calabresi.
The Next Stop project has been selected for The COVID-19 Visual Project. A Time of Distance (2020), Festival Cortona On The Move.
Participated in the collective exhibition Faces and stories from the margins: Photography and art from Afghanistan, Tanzania, Kenya and Ukraine, as part of the WeWorld festival (May 2025).
His photographs have been published in several national and international publications.
His works are part of the permanent collections of PAN - Palazzo delle Arti in Naples and of the Bartoli Felter Foundation in Cagliari.