I was meditating in front of my laptop just few seconds ago, I stopped doing anything. I was flowing with my mind through all the experienced lived in the last month, to all the faces I have seen, conversations I have been in. Photographs. I was showing them yesterday night at the Photo Circle in Kathmandu. I was looking at them as if I didn’t even captured them, as if they don’t belong to me.Indeed they belong to humanity.

Photographs. And this passion to chase them, to halt the fragments of this life. Such a powerful tool of remembrance, such a gift.  The possibility to capture one moment, the present that is becoming past right after the moment of a click. An infinite desire of love, to love a some more. Here I am at ISKCOM in Boudhanilkanta, Nepal, Hare Krishana Ashram. Ram Chandra Das has just finish his class. People are chanting ‘Hare Krishna’ loudly, raising their arms to the sky.  Love, Indeed. One of the last sentence of the lesson deeply touched me, coming from the Tulasidasa, it sounds like that: “In other words, semen and unite both come from the genitals, but semen produces a child whereas urines produce nothing. Therefore if a child is neither a hero or a devotee, he is not a son but urine…”

Dear friends, this SATURDAY 18TH MAY 2013 at 6:30PM at THE YELLOW HOUSE in SANEPA, Kathmandu, I will present my work ViaTerra: Reporting Beyond the Surface, my overland journey documenting people realities encountered at various stops including Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, India and Nepal.

On June 14th Iran will elect the Seventh president since the Islamic Republic, amongst a widespread feeling of hopelessness amongst its citizens. Since last election life for ordinary Iranians has become more difficult, due to increasing freedom restriction and the miserable economic conditions. This time there are no reformist candidates who could stir the desire of change of the Iranians. The status quo is generating rising dissatisfaction especially amongst the city-youth, pushed between a traditional and conservative society and the expansion of knowledge and self-consciousness created by the internet and the diffusion of social networks. ‘Iran before tomorrow’ is a photograph of Iran approaching to the elections, portraying the daily life of the Iranians, their rituals, their desires, their contradictions and their vices.

Explore the Photo-Story

Incontro Shiva Das alle 9 del mattino, quando il sole è già alto sopra Benares, l’affascinante città della regione indiana dell’Uttar Pradesh, considerata la più sacra dagli induisti. La giornata di Shiva Das è cominciata prima dell’alba, con una serie di pratiche spirituali culminanti in un’abluzione nel fiume Gange. Indossa un abito e un turbante rosso, che non celano i suoi occhi azzurri ed il suo sguardo calmo e concentrato, ma che riescono in effetti a nascondere la sua origine. Shiva Das è nato in una casa di campagna a Bertesinella, in provincia di Vicenza, ma la sua vita errabonda si è sviluppata soprattutto in India, dove è diventato un guru della famiglia degli Udassim. Insieme a milioni di altri fedeli induisti egli ha passato gli ultimi due mesi sulle rive del Gange, tra l’incredibile festival del Kumbh Mela ad Allahabad e l’annuale celebrazione di Shivaratri a Benares.

Tutta l’intervista su La Nuova Vicenza

Kathmandu was warm as a desert on this May 1st, 2013. But the 32ºC didn’t discouraged thousands of people who went out of the street today to celebrate the Labor Day. Although probably the most of the people in Nepal today have been working as usual, hundreds of people gathered on the different rallies organized by trade unions and political parties in the center of the city, between Ratna Park, Bhrikuti Mandap and Durbar Square. Half of the city wore the red color of Communism, but were far to be united. Read more …

Potete raccontarmi quello che volete sull’Iran. Potete dirmi che la teocrazia dominante sta lavorando ad un ordigno nucleare, potete dirmi che al governo c’é Hezbollah che supporta il regime siriano di Bashar Al-Assad e potete dirmi che il paese è schierato contro l’America e contro l’arrogante mondo Occidentale in generale. Potete continuare a raccontarmi tutte queste cose ed io sarò lieto di ascoltarvi, ma ora sarò io che in breve vi racconterò la mia esperienza con il paese persiano. L’ostacolo principale è stato il visto, che ho rincorso per mezza Turchia e per il Caucaso e alla fine ho ottenuto a Baku, in Azerbaigian, grazie ad uno dei pochi tipi in gamba incontrati elemosinando aiuto alle agenzie di viaggio della capitale. Sono arrivato al confine di Astara in autostop due giorni dopo Natale, dopo una nottata passata con dei ragazzi azeri mezzi ubriachi della mia età a gironzolare in nove dentro ad un taxi stile Fiat 128 con sedili in pelle nera e una bella lista di cd in bella vista sul cruscotto. Read more …

( online in Turkish for daily Birgun -  Kutsal kent Varanasi’nin çelişkili yüzleri)  - [See the Photoreportage on this website]

I have been to Varanasi for the first time last February and for a month I wasn’t able to leave this hypnotizing city. The first day I went out for my one of my random wanderings around its small alleys, I got quickly lost into the traffic of rishaw and motorbikes, emitting stinking gases and continuously horning every time they were overtaking another vehicle. The unbearable noises of the horns and the chocking air quickly drove me to the most relaxed area of the Gange shore, where devotees were taking auspicious baths in the river considered holy.  Read more …

(leggi in italiano: Iran: Generazione Inquietudine)

Pushed between a traditional and conservative society – exasperated by the strict islamic laws applied by the ruling theocracy – and the expansion of knowledge about the world created by the internet and the diffusion of social networks, the generation of people born after the Islamic Revolution is at stake. The majority of the city-youth are looking towards the Western lifestyles and individual freedom, while the regime is starkly opposing any forms of Westernization of the culture and the customs, while suffering from international sanctions which are flattening the economy. According to the majority of the young people, the 70% of them do not feel represented by the Islamic Republic and are disillusioned about the possibility of a change. Such malaise generate either transgression or frustration amongst the youth, which are obliged to organize parties privately, to meet people in secret, to renounce to their dreams and to seek for opportunities to leave the country and start a new life elsewhere.

See the Reportage