Via San Gregorio Armeno in the morning

San Gregorio Armeno runs between the two decumani of the ancient Greek city, and for centuries its workshops have made presepe figures — shepherds, angels, market stalls, and satirical portraits of whoever is in the news. The street is four metres wide, the shopfronts spill onto it, and the overhead space is filled with hanging displays.

It is the densest street in Naples in a photographic sense: every square centimetre carries detail and colour. That makes it a portrait street rather than a scenery one — work close, let the figures and lanterns go soft behind a face, and use the doorways of the workshops as frames. Light comes down the gap between the buildings, so the middle of the morning, when the sun is high enough to reach the paving, is brighter than dawn here.

The crowd is the trade-off, and it is severe from November to early January, when the whole city comes for Christmas: at that time it can be genuinely impassable. Out of season, before ten in the morning, the shutters are going up and the artisans are working at their benches — the best version of this street, and the one that produces pictures with people making things in them rather than tourists buying them.