The Limited Times

Bucciarelli, my shots so as not to forget

10/11/2020, 9:49:08 AM


No more war fronts and crisis zones. The approach does not change, but at the moment the focus is on Italy, hit by the Coronavirus drama. Faces, memories, pain. (HANDLE)

TURIN - No more war fronts and crisis areas.

The approach does not change, but at the moment the focus is on Italy, hit by the Coronavirus drama.

Faces, memories, pain.

Fabio Bucciarelli, multi-award-winning Turin photojournalist, born in 1980, was the first to document the suffering of the sick from within, in homes and hospitals, in Bergamo and its surroundings, in mid-March, in the most terrible days of the pandemic.


    His work now continues throughout Italy and among the most recent shots there are those in Sicily on Covid and migrants.


    Bucciarelli talks about his long reportage at the center of the epidemic made for the New York Times - his photos have also been published by Espresso - at Palazzo Madama in Turin, at the World Press Photo exhibition now open to the public.

He is one of the six Italians on the podium: he obtained the second prize in the stories section of the General News category for a report made for L'Espresso on the protests in Chile.


    "Initially on Covid there were only empty spaces filled with masks. asked: Why are there no images from within? Why are there no people who are suffering? It is like documenting a war with no injuries, refugees or victims. So I turned my gaze to the intimate documentation, entered families, homes and in hospitals ", Bucciarelli tells ANSA.


    "I wanted to get to know the sick up close, their intimacy", explains the photographer who since 2010 tells of the great historical changes that have taken place in Africa and the Middle East.

"I shared my ideas and my interest with the Italian Red Cross, which allowed me to enter homes, I wore the same uniforms as doctors and nurses. There are many aspects of this report that I like to talk about: how you enter into intimacy to make certain types of images in a certain context and in a specific time, how do you get the release permits to publish the images ..


    Bucciarelli underlines the importance of the work done to document the epidemic from within . "Covid has forced photographers and journalists to change the way they work, first of all at the logistical level.

It had never happened to me to stay for so many consecutive months here in Italy, I am used to moving, traveling around the world.

But I think it is a duty for an Italian photographer to document what is happening, to help create a historical memory ". (ANSA).