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Reportage

Fausto Podavini

Photographer

Fausto Podavini

Mujahidin Oyoub

In 1985, when the mass rebellion of the Indian Kashmir population was still not expected, Oyoub Waja was only 20 years old and he was crossing the boundary that still divides the Pakistan side from the Indian side of the former J&K’s princedom. The destination was a military training camp located in Waziristan: these were the years of the Soviet-Afghan war. From that time on, thousands of Kashmiri young people would have run the same way and reached other military camps beyond the boundary to take up weapons, this time against India. In the early 90s, when the war was at its peak, Oyoub was the commander of the downtown area in Srinagar, the summer capital of J&K. He, as other militants did, almost became a myth for young people of a city that was informally under his grip. Then, in September 1993, an accident occurred while he was setting a mine towards a senior officer of the Indian army. The accident was caused by a false contact, a small human distraction. The device exploded in the small room where he stood with another mujahideen and his sister who was serving tea in that moment. These two suddenly died. Oyoub miraculously survived at the blast, though he lost his sight and remained impaired. According to some neighbors it has been Allah’s will to cause all that in order to punish Oyoub for all the things he committed. Oyoub Waja, whose name has been chosen in honor to the Pakistan general Oyoub Khan, he is now alone in the perpetual night of his own world. 20 years have passed, and now he finds himself alone, convinced of his utopias but abandoned by india, the separatists organizations, the politicians in Pakistan, its military body and his neighborhood.

Fausto Podavini

Fausto Podavini was born in Rome, where he currently lives and works. He began his photographic journey first as an assistant and studio photographer, to approach gradually to photo-reportage. Podavini has also been part of MIFAV Tor Vergata University, where got to know and been in contact with many photographers. After abandoning studio photography to devote himself exclusively to reportage, he then embarked himself as a freelance, working with various non-profit organization for the realization of reports in Italy, Peru, Kenya and Ethiopia, where he currently is pursuing some personal photo projects. In 2009 he began a collaboration with the Collective WSP, joined permanently in 2010, where, in addition to work as a photographer in collective projects, he works as a professor of Photojournalism. In addition to his various reports in Africa, South America and India, Podavini has carried out important work on the Italian territory such as a report on sport for disabled, a report in a juvenile prison and a work on Alzheimer's disease, with whom he won the Daily Life section of the World Press Photo 2013.  His works have won international awards such as The World Press Photo in 2013 and 2018, Il Poy in 2016 and 2018, Sony, Yves Rocher Grant and have been published in the most important international magazines such as 6Mois, LeVie / LeMonde, GEO ES, Stern, Internzainale, Donna Moderna, National Geographic, Days Japan and has exhibited in major cities such as New York, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome.