Pictures for the commercial campaign “Why I’ve choosen Rosss”. Photographs are taken in Belgium, Holland and Norway to portrait the people who chose to use Rosss racking, shelvings and cantilevers. The images have been used for their website and publications on worldwide magazines.
This project was carried out in N.Y. The pictures were made for Classica distribution company, owned by Avignonesi winery. They were later used to promote their wines and published in several issues of the Gambero Rosso magazine. One of the pictures was published as a cover for Slow Food magazine.
Although unlicensed boxing is not illegal it can be seen as a rougher, more brutal side of the sport. Unlicensed fighters are boxers who are not licensed by the British Boxing Board of Control and often have everyday professions outside of the ring. Unlicensed boxing covers a wide range of fighters and fighting contests but this doesn’t mean that the fighters are taking part in anything illegal. Most are matches staged in leisure centres, nightclubs and halls with gloves, referees, trainers and medics. However, some of the fights are not staged under strict conditions and would not meet the criteria set up by many organizations. Roy Shaw, Lenny McLean and Donny ‘the bull’ Adams are all former legends of the unlicensed game attracting huge crowds and bets whenever they fought. Lenny McLean fought Roy Shaw three times in the late 1970’s in front of massive crowds and the press also covered the controversial fight between Roy Shaw and Donny ‘the bull’ Adams.The police objected to the contest as it was originally going to be staged bareknuckle. The fight did go ahead, with gloves, and Roy Shaw won with a knockout in the first round. Many gypsy fighters still continue the tradition of bareknuckle fighting today. Today the unlicensed fight game still goes on and there are a few main promoters around London. The pictures have been taken during the events organized by Mean Machine Promotions, run by Joe Pyle.
“Nabaje” is a lingala expression often used by Kinshasa’s street children meaning “enough”. When they’re offended, or something goes wrong this is what they say: nabaje. Unfortunately this term recurs among those children who have had to bear quite a lot in their lives. Most of them have been abandoned by families after being accused of sorcery, or have been refused by their parents’ new partners; rarely they decide to leave their home of their own accord. When they do it is because there is nothing to eat. On the street they manage to find something. According to a recent census in Kinshasa there are more than 13,000 street-children, but a realistic evaluation would be nearer 20,000. They live in the street begging or doing little jobs to survive. There are hundreds of organizations working to confront this problem. Among these, UNICEF, in collaboration with local NGOs, such as REEJER, is making a great effort to awaken public opinion to the problem and help these children return to a normal life. The project was carried out in partnership with UNICEF Italia.
For many years, although never enough, we have been hearing about war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A war apparently caused by ethnic reasons, when in fact the true reasons are purely economic. DR Congo is one of the richest countries in the world; under its soil it hides many different minerals, from gold to diamonds, cassiterite and coltan, just to mention some. They are mainly concentrated in the Eastern part of the country and this explains why all the different militia are based in that area. Minerals are the main cause of the Congolese war and women and children are its victims. “This is the worst place to be a child”, is what Congolese people say: and it is true. The militia hiding in the forests use them as their main weapon. They kidnap them from schools and from their houses leaving them no other choice than to become soldiers. Six, seven, eight years old soldiers. They are cracking fighters. They have no fear, war is a game. They are pushed to the front line because they are brave, they do not understand yet what death is. Many of them kill, many die. The few that manage to go back to a normal life, thanks to rehabilitation programs recently instituted under pressure of the UN, often fail to reintegrate with the civilians. They are dissociated, what they have experienced has made them callous and coldhearted. Victims of this war are women too: victims of the militias that loot villages, of the governmental soldiers who have no money and are predators themselves. But above all they are victims of brutal rapes daily perpetrated by groups of soldiers from all factions. Often, after committing the violence, the soldiers drag the women with them in the forest. Here the women are abused repeatedly for years, by tens of people. The luckiest ones are left in their houses half dead, rejected by their husbands and by society. Only in South Kivu, from January to September 2008, the UN agency Unfpa censed 11.600 women who required treatment following violence: 95% of them had been raped by militias. It is estimated that since 1998 victims of rape in North Kivu have been more than 30.000, but those who don’t’ speak out of shame are many more. And the majority of them have contracted Hiv.
There are about 7.000 Romany living in nomad camps around Rome; some of them live in illegal camps and others in legal ones, equipped or partially equipped, of private or municipal property. About 70% of them come from families which moved to Italy more than 450 years ago and by now are completely Italian. Only a small percentage of them have recently immigrated here. The Romany camp network will be dismantled by the new “regulation for the management of equipped settlements for nomad communities in the municipality of Rome”, approved on February 19th and undersigned by the prefect of Rome, Giuseppe Pecoraro, in the person of delegate commissioner for the nomad emergency. According to the document, people living in the camps will have to follow very strict behavior rules. Are these necessary precautions or is this the birth of new ghettos? We are being watched by the European Community, and the image that Italy is projecting is that of a racist and xenophobic country, representing “a risk for the entire Community”.
Bangladesh, a country crossed by hundreds of rivers, is annually subject to Monsoon flooding but this year it has been worse than ever. More than a third of the country has been submerged by water causing disease and compromising the harvest. Over 70.000 people lost their homes and have been forced to move to one of the many centers for homeless people. But the drinking water problem is undoubtedly the biggest of all. Entire families use the rivers as toilets, infecting the water, which they also use for drinking or washing. This problem, added to the lack of food which makes the immune system more vulnerable, has led to the rapid diffusion of cholera, hepatitis B, severe diarrhea and respiratory infections.
Following the American embargo after the fall of the Soviet Union, the clampdown on Cuba has been completed. The precarious financial resources of the island have been quickly exhausted and degradation has spread everywhere. This is obvious above all in the beautiful colonial buildings whose structure has by now been patched up over and over again. But this isn’t all: cars, street signs, roads and antiquated electrical systems climbing on the faded walls of the buildings. It’s as if time stopped thirty years ago, landing on the rust that covers metal sheets, on cars, in the salt invading the facades of the Malecon. But this structural immobility is strongly contrasted by the music, which pours into the streets, flows into the houses, the old taxis, the workshops, over the squares and inside cafés. Like Havana, it enters your veins and your heart.
From “The American Dream,” to the Inferno can be a very small step. In Los Angeles you just have to cross one street for it, Main street. In the shadow of L.A.’s postmodern business-core it’s hard to believe your own eyes. Skid Row, an area that covers 10 square blocks, hides no less than 15000 homeless people. It is the largest concentration of homelessness in the country. The “lucky ones” can afford a cheap room in one of the dodgy hotels around Skid Row. Others stay in the missions. Here, lost souls get free food, medical aid and mental support in their struggle against drug or alcohol-addictions. At least ten missions try to swallow the enormous influx of homeless people. But it´s David fighting Goliath. Thousands of men, women and children are exposed to the dark reality of the street. Skid Row has been in the making for years. In the “Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck already talks about traveling contractors and their misery. A lot of them winded up in what is called dependency zones because of the many shelters and missions. Alcohol and violence were part of everyday life. Now , these dependency zones still exist. Crack and heroine have changed the profile of the homeless. Still, not everybody has an addiction in these streets of hell. Sharpening social polarization, record levels of poverty and manufacturing decay make the problem more complex. About twenty percent of the homeless have a job. Families with children are the fastest growing segment amongst homeless people. It´s no miracle that Los Angeles is referred to as the first third world city in the USA.
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