OfSofia Comensoli
The photojournalist Fabio Bucciarelli at Angolo Terme for Oltreconfine Festival. «A photo can also change the course of history»
«A good photograph is above all sincere». Fabio Bucciarelli photographer, author and journalist who brought the atrocious moments of the 2020 pandemic all over the world, also reported by the New York Times, knows exactly what it means to crystallize an instant into a moment of eternity to tell the truth to the world.
Wednesday 8 May at the Angolo Terme theater during the Oltreconfine festival the reporter enchanted an astonished audience who listened to the story of years of reporting between revolutions, wars, famines and epidemics.
«Until 2009 I was an engineer in Barcelona, fixed and safe place, there I started to ask myself what my place in the world really was so I chose to leave security to follow my passion which was photography – explained Bucciarelli – The first step was to document the L’Aquila earthquake in Abruzzo. Where, among other things, I have family roots, the first photos of those moments belong to me personally and to think that they weren’t even paid to me but at least I was able to tell something from inside, to photograph the disaster that the earth leaves behind him when he starts to tremble.”
From there the first assignments with news agencies then the bravest choice, that of becoming a freelancer. The first engagement was a photojournalism to document Gaddafi’s regime in Libya and the Arab Spring of 2010. «Initially I went with senior reporters, I learned how to behave in attack zones, I prepared myself from a medical point of view to be able to help in the event of an attack, from a logistical point of view to know how to move in high-pressure areas. high risk but above all I learned which sources to follow and which not to, which, in certain contexts, can even cost you your life.”
Bucciarelli then continues to the Middle East in Aleppo in Syria in 2012 and in Donbass in Ukraine in 2014 still at the dawn of the undeclared war with Russia and returns there in the following years and in the more recent 2022 and 2023. He then moves to the South America, Chile and Amazon, documents the climate emergency and that of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea in 2016, then the war in South Sudan forgotten by the world and finally the latest pandemic crisis in the most affected areas. His photos, especially those of the Covid-19 epidemic, travel around the globewhat distinguishes his images are a deep empathy and a personal aesthetic which have also allowed him to become one of the most influential contemporary photojournalists in Italy.
At the end of the evening, the historian and critic of the snapshot, Luisa Bondoni, asks him the most difficult question: «Can a photograph change the course of history?» she asks him. He reflects briefly and replies: «A snapshot can change the way we see things in the world and of consequences it can allow us to make one choice over another. So, yes: a photograph can change the course of our history.”
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May 9, 2024 (modified May 9, 2024 | 2:45 pm)
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