1st place
gold star award
Pietro Di Giambattista
italy 
title
Gypsies
These are the words used by the boss Salvatore Buzzi, intercepted by the police in the setting of the investigation “Mafia capitale”, that overwhelmed Rome's municipality in 2015: they give a clear image of a typical italian paradox. 180.000 Roms and Sintas lives in Italy, that correspond only to the 0,25% of the whole population but are perceived by Italians as a bigger menace also because they are continuously made object of political controversy, often used to gain easy consensus. Among them, only 40.000 are living in documented disadvantage and secluded in the so called “nomad camps”: areas created as a temporary and emergency solution and that in the past 20 years instead feed a spiral of corruption and bad management that not only not solved the problem of the integration of Roms and Sintas populations, but gave Italy the sad European record for intolerance and hate.
One fifth of the total Rom population living in documented disadvantage is concentrated in the city of Rome, almost 8.000 people living in the “nomad camps”, so called because for at least 2.000 years people of romanì language were nomadic: hailing from India, they have always have been skilled artisans in metal crafting, carousel owners, horse breeders, so far as hated and oppressed.
The work shows the last true nomadic camps in Rome, ghettos established for racial reasons by a Western democratic state, documenting the precarious life conditions of the inhabitants.
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entry description
“I zingari rendono più della droga” (Gypsies earn more that drugs).These are the words used by the boss Salvatore Buzzi, intercepted by the police in the setting of the investigation “Mafia capitale”, that overwhelmed Rome's municipality in 2015: they give a clear image of a typical italian paradox. 180.000 Roms and Sintas lives in Italy, that correspond only to the 0,25% of the whole population but are perceived by Italians as a bigger menace also because they are continuously made object of political controversy, often used to gain easy consensus. Among them, only 40.000 are living in documented disadvantage and secluded in the so called “nomad camps”: areas created as a temporary and emergency solution and that in the past 20 years instead feed a spiral of corruption and bad management that not only not solved the problem of the integration of Roms and Sintas populations, but gave Italy the sad European record for intolerance and hate.
One fifth of the total Rom population living in documented disadvantage is concentrated in the city of Rome, almost 8.000 people living in the “nomad camps”, so called because for at least 2.000 years people of romanì language were nomadic: hailing from India, they have always have been skilled artisans in metal crafting, carousel owners, horse breeders, so far as hated and oppressed.
The work shows the last true nomadic camps in Rome, ghettos established for racial reasons by a Western democratic state, documenting the precarious life conditions of the inhabitants.
about the photographer
Pietro Di Giambattista was born in Pannarano (BN) in 1956, began to devote himself to photography only late in life and does not follow any regular course. For some time he devoted himself to the genre of landscape and only in 1996 attending a workshop on landscape with Eddie Ephraums to TPW, has the opportunity to visit the exhibition of the famous photojournalist Antonin kratocvil that turns him into a new passion: the photojournalism . Since then abandons the status of self-taught and began attending various workshops with Antonin Kratochvil, Paolo Pellegrin, Francesco Zizola, Maurizio Galimberti for Polaroid materials, Michael Ackerman, Yuri Kozyrev, the starter course to the profession with Rolando Fava at the Permanent School of Photography Graffiti directed by Gianni pinnizzotto. In 2002 he ranked third in the Portraits section at World Press Photo with a portrait as part of his project "Nomadi". That same year he won first place at the international competition Solighetto. This result gives him the ability to publish the book "Nomads". Pietro Di Giambattista has been exhibited in Rome, Naples, Milan, Barcelona, Solighetto, Bari etc.back to gallery
