E lucevan le stelle, tells the story of men, whose lives have been disrupted by mental pain, living in social housing. The image composition was driven by the artist’s desire to make the human mental suffering condition more widely known to the public, who is often afraid of it, and it does so by showing its real nature, its silences, its empty spaces, its voids, the humanity inside the pain. The title is a pledge to music, it takes inspiration from Puccini’s aria, it refers to all that is lost in life. Photos were taken in three different social houses for psychiatric patients at the NCO co-op near Caserta, which invests mental health funds in social reintegration projects & methods.