Documentary photograpER · Community psychology RESEARCHER · TRAINER
I do not photograph to show. I photograph to let understand.
I am a documentary photographer, a community psychologist and a trainer, one of the very few working as all three. Since 2007 this has taken me from the cover of National Geographic Italia to the chamber of the Council of Europe, and into the rooms of companies, universities and institutions. I photograph people and places from the inside, and I use images not only to tell change, but to set it in motion.
My work as photographer is published in the world's leading titles, from New York Times, to Guardian, El Pais, Time, Repubblica, Internazionale, National Geographic and many many others. I have portrayed Nobel laureates and leading voices of our time.
As a researcher I pioneered Photovoice in Italy and Europe, and from it I created Photo Story, adopted by the European Commission, while my project SHAME became part of the campaign behind a Council of Europe resolution addressed to its 46 states.
For nearly twenty years I have trained people for companies, institutions and universities, from Atlas Copco and Enel to Padua and La Sapienza, to see differently and to act on what they see.
Whatever you bring me, a story to assign, a portrait, a community to listen to, a team that needs to change, it begins the same way: with respect for the people in front of the camera, from Nobel laureates to survivors. And it ends the same way too, with work that moves things. If that is what you are looking for, let's talk.
National Geographic Italia cover, 2024 · Pioneer of Photovoice in Italy · Creator of Photo Story (EU Climate Pact) · Author of SHAME, European Stories (Council of Europe) · Getty Images contributor
Director, Justice Initiative Italia · Founder, ECA Global · EU Climate Pact Ambassador · Board Member, ECPAT Italia
SELECTED REPORTAGE
ONGOING · THE PO VALLEY
PADUS | The Living Plain
The plain where water, land and communities meet their limit. Rivers that shrink, a sea that climbs inland, a territory negotiating with the climate again.
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Projects, one story at a time
ONGOING · JUSTICE INITIATIVE · ECA GLOBAL · COUNCIL OF EUROPE
SHAME | Stories
Portraits of survivors of childhood abuse, shown in more than twenty five cities. A rare case of documentary photography informing European policy.
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ONGOING · ITALIAN ALPS
DOLOMITES | Resilient Communities
Mountains are not scenery. They are fragile ecosystems, local economies, communities that endure. As the glaciers retreat and the crowds arrive, the people of the high valleys learn again how to hold their ground.
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Training & participatory research
I help people and groups to empower.
I am a community psychologist, and what I do is empowerment. Organisations, institutions and communities call me when people need not just to understand a situation, but to take hold of it. The method is Photovoice, and it works through photography, the most universal language we have: it crosses age, education and background, it says in one frame what a report struggles to explain, and it lets people speak about things they would never put into words. It also leaves something behind. Every project ends with images that belong to the community itself, and that a city, an institution or a group can exhibit, publish and use to keep the change going long after I have left.
I know the method deeply enough to decline it for any purpose. From it I created Photo Story, a tool for citizen engagement adopted by the European Commission for the EU Climate Pact and now used across Europe by people I have never met. With EuCliPa and the EU Climate Pact I led Italian Cities Towards Climate Neutrality, guiding citizens to map how the climate is changing their cities and to propose nature based adaptation. I have worked with EMERGENCY on gender inclusion, with the CNR, Italy's National Research Council, on a city and its waters, with Enel on energy poverty and on the lives of vulnerable older people, with Venice's UEPE on the return to society of people leaving prison, and with the Istituto Veneto per il Lavoro helping unemployed adults learn to present their own project. Atlas Copco, the Veneto Region, universities from Padua to La Sapienza. Different rooms, one method, always the same movement: from seeing, to proposing, to acting.
Give a community a camera,
and it will show you what to change
FEATURED
PER GRADI
BOOKS AND ZINES
THE WORKS IN YOUR HAND
A book to understand climate change, written for schools and for anyone taking a first step into how the world is shifting. Endorsed by the scientific committee of EuCliPa.it, the Italian association of European Climate Pact ambassadors.
MORE EDITIONS
SHAME | EUROPEAN STORIES
Portraits of survivors of abuse suffered in childhood, held with dignity across more...
I GRAFFITI DI VENEZIA
The marks that hands carved into the stones of Venice over the centuries, read as a quiet, hidden history of the city. Co-authored with Alberto Toso Fei.
BEHIND A GONDOLA | ZINE
The hands that keep Venice alive, seen behind the postcard. A limited edition zine on the city's craftspeople, and on the work that rarely reaches the surface.
Behind · a monthly letter
Not the photograph, but what happens around it.
Behind is a monthly letter about photography, and about everything that stands around it. How a story is built with images. What it means to make a photograph, and to learn to see. And the world that hides behind what we look at, waiting to be understood. The photograph is never the whole story. Behind is where the rest lives.