I am Simone Padovani, a documentary photographer, community psychologist, researcher and trainer, based in Venice. Since 2007 I have worked where images and people meet: telling long form stories, studying how communities see themselves, and teaching others to see. The camera and the mind have never been separate for me. They are the same way of looking.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

My photographs are distributed worldwide through Getty Images and have appeared in National Geographic, the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, the BBC and Forbes, among many other leading titles. In February 2024 my work on the glass masters of Murano earned the cover and lead story of National Geographic Italia. As official photographer of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, I work in studied, posed portraiture, from Nobel laureates such as Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Wole Soyinka to writers, thinkers and public figures. My long term projects follow climate, memory and human rights across years, not headlines.

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RESEARCH AND METHOD

As a community psychologist, I work with Photovoice, a participatory method I have pioneered in Italy since 2007. Rather than photographing a community from the outside, it hands the community the camera, so people document their own reality and turn those images into analysis and proposals for change. I decline the method by purpose, for scientific research, territorial mapping, citizen engagement and social change. From this work came Photo Story, the declination adopted by the European Commission for the EU Climate Pact. Photography, for me, is not only a way to document reality, but a way to take part in it.

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TRAINING

For nearly twenty years I have also worked as a trainer and educator, carrying the same method into the room. I have led training for universities, from a two decade collaboration with the University of Padua to Roma Tre, Federico II and La Sapienza, for public institutions such as the Veneto Region and the National Research Council of Italy, for European bodies, and for companies including Atlas Copco and Enel. My training moves between photography, visual communication and participatory methods, declined for engagement, team building, research and social change. The conviction underneath is always the same: learning to see is learning to understand.

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COMMITMENT

My work has never stopped at the image. I am Director of the Italy Hub of the Justice Initiative, the European campaign whose work led to Resolution 2533 of the Council of Europe, which calls on its 46 member states to recognise and repair child abuse in institutions, and through which my project SHAME gave a face to survivors across Europe. I am a founder and board member of ECA Global, active in more than forty countries, and its European representative to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. I serve on the board of ECPAT Italia, and I am an Ambassador of the EU Climate Pact. I believe photography carries a responsibility, not only to show the world, but to help change it.

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I still photograph for the same reason I began: to understand something I did not understand before, and to let others see it too.

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