honorable mention
Pietro Di Giambattista italy
title
We are Gypsies
These are the words used by the boss Salvatore Buzzi, intercepted by the police during the so called “Mafia capitale”, an investigation that overwhelmed Rome's municipality in 2015: these words give a clear image of a typical Italian paradox. 180.000 Roms and Sintas live in Italy; they correspond only to the 0,25% of the entire population, but are perceived by Italians as a bigger menace, and primarily because they are continuously made object of a political controversy often used to gain easy consensus. Among them, only 40.000 are living in documented disadvantaged and secluded conditions, in the so called “nomad camps”: areas created as a temporary and emergency solution, that in the past 20 years, have fed a spiral of corruption and bad management; in this manner, not only the problem of the integration of Roms and Sintas populations has not been solved, but it has given Italy the sad European record for intolerance and hate.One fifth of the total Rom population living in such documented disadvantaged conditions is concentrated in the city of Rome: almost 8.000 people living in the “nomad camps”. Today these authorized camps are real ghettos on the edge of the city, where in addition to overcrowding, different ethnic groups are forced to live with all the consequences that this entails. Consequences often aggravated by the belonging of these ethnic groups to very distant religions, such as Orthodox Christians and Islam.
Finally, not to mention all the delinquent activities that in these situations always find a very fertile ground.
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entry description
“I zingari rendono più della droga” (Gypsies yield more that drugs).These are the words used by the boss Salvatore Buzzi, intercepted by the police during the so called “Mafia capitale”, an investigation that overwhelmed Rome's municipality in 2015: these words give a clear image of a typical Italian paradox. 180.000 Roms and Sintas live in Italy; they correspond only to the 0,25% of the entire population, but are perceived by Italians as a bigger menace, and primarily because they are continuously made object of a political controversy often used to gain easy consensus. Among them, only 40.000 are living in documented disadvantaged and secluded conditions, in the so called “nomad camps”: areas created as a temporary and emergency solution, that in the past 20 years, have fed a spiral of corruption and bad management; in this manner, not only the problem of the integration of Roms and Sintas populations has not been solved, but it has given Italy the sad European record for intolerance and hate.One fifth of the total Rom population living in such documented disadvantaged conditions is concentrated in the city of Rome: almost 8.000 people living in the “nomad camps”. Today these authorized camps are real ghettos on the edge of the city, where in addition to overcrowding, different ethnic groups are forced to live with all the consequences that this entails. Consequences often aggravated by the belonging of these ethnic groups to very distant religions, such as Orthodox Christians and Islam.
Finally, not to mention all the delinquent activities that in these situations always find a very fertile ground.
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