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Mattia Vacca

Photographer

Mattia Vacca

A long goodbye

Every year the 11th of July a sea of coffins lined up for the funeral in the small, used to be forgotten at-the-end-of-the-road town called Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
The international criminal court said the most terrible crimes of genocide on European soil since the Second World War were committed in Srebrenica area when the Bosnian Serb forces massacred more than 8000 of Muslims after the enclave, ironically under U.N. protection as a safe heaven, was overrun by an army led by its ruthless commander; General Ratko Mladic.
On may 2011, after more than 15 years on the run Mladic was captured in a small village in Serbia and he joins Radovan Karadzic, his war-time president and another “butcher of Balkans”, in the Hague.
Over 4.000 body bags are still in a cold store, waiting to be opened and checked by the experts of ICMP (International Commission of Missing Persons), whose mission is to complete the bodies and identify them.

Mattia Vacca

Mattia Vacca is a freelance photojournalist and a documentary photographer. For ten years, he was a daily contributor for Corriere della Sera covering breaking news stories in Northern Italy. He is currently working on various personal projects focused on social issues and the consequences of armed conflicts around the world.  His first self-published photobook, a winter’s tale, came out in 2014.  In 2018 he joins Prospekt Agency. His work has been featured on new republic, the guardian, the independent, die zeit, france soir, BBC, vice, vanity fair, elle decor, private photoreview, l’oeil de la photographie, corriere della sera, la repubblica and la stampa among the others.  He received numerous awards, including Sony World Photography Awards, Royal Photographic Society Awards, Unesco Humanity Photo Awards, Renaissance Prize, New York Photo Awards, Felix Schoeller Awards, Kolga Tbilisi Photo Awards, International Photography Awards and Phodar Biennial.  His photographs have been exhibited in galleries and festivals worldwide. He was also a TEDx speaker.